matter is, that
there's something unholy among us.'

The Baron's goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.

'I'll make an unholy thing of him that says it,' and Werner lowered at
them one by one.

'Then I say it, Herr Baron!' pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his
frontispiece: 'The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up
there--Ah, it's gone now; but where's the man sitting this side saw it
not?'

The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.

'Now! will any rascal here please to say so?'

Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many
in the act of confirming the assertion.

'Stand out, Henker Rotthals!'

Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the
board.

'Beast!' roared the Baron, 'I said I wouldn't shed blood to-night. I
spared a traitor, and an enemy----'

'Look again!' said Rothhals; 'will any fellow say he saw nothing there.'

While all heads, including Werner's, were directed to the aperture which
surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.

This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation. The
Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.

'So you trifle with me? I'm dangerous for that game. Mind you of
Blass-Gesell? I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters
of the road to hell for trial.' Bellowing, 'Take that!' he discharged a
broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals.
It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him
as he fell against the wall.

'There's a lesson for you not to cross me, children!' said Werner,
striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing
his monstrous girth of chest and midriff. 'Let him stop there awhile, to
show what comes of thwarting Werner!--Fire-devils! before the baroness,
too!--Something unholy is there? Something unholy in his jaw, I
think!--Leave it sticking! He's against meat last, is he? I'll teach you
who he's for!--Who speaks?'

All hung silent. These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.

He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked,
rather than called, a second time 'Who spoke?'

He had not again to ask. In this pause, as the Baron glared for his
victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which
every syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him
in his angry posture.

'T