day,
like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first."

"Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle
threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears; but he was
an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor.
Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long
Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose
hand is over all the earth? Pagan!"

"So you knocked him down forthwith--like a good Christian."

"Now, Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part. Had
it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took
but a sorry bolster from this weak arm."

"What weak arm?" inquired Denys, with twinkling eyes. "I have lived
among arms, and by Samson's hairy pow never saw I one more like a
catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed
behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath,
or Julius Caesar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St.
Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from
their weak arms--thou diabolical young hypocrite."

The river took many turns, and this sometimes brought the wind on their
side instead of right astern. Then they all moved to the weather side
to prevent the boat heeling over too much all but a child of about five
years old, the grandson of the boatman, and his darling; this urchin
had slipped on board at the moment of starting, and being too light
to affect the boat's trim, was above, or rather below, the laws of
navigation.

They sailed merrily on, little conscious that they were pursued by a
whole posse of constables armed with the bailiff's writ, and that their
pursuers were coming up with them; for if the wind was strong, so was
the current.

And now Gerard suddenly remembered that this was a very good way to
Rome, but not to Burgundy. "Oh, Denys," said he, with an almost alarmed
look, "this is not your road."

"I know it," said Denys quietly; "but what can I do? I cannot leave thee
till the fever leaves thee; and it is on thee still, for thou art
both red and white by turns; I have watched thee. I must e'en go on to
Cologne, I doubt, and then strike across."

"Thank Heaven," said Gerard joyfully. He added eagerly, with a little
touch of self-deception, "'Twere a sin to be so near Cologne and not see
it. Oh, man, it is a vast and ancient city such as I have often dr