ve of the clock I lifted the great wolf's-head knocker of shining
brass which frowned above the door of Master Gerard von Sturm in the port
of the Weiss Thor. Hardly had I let it fall again when a small wicket,
apparently about two feet above my head, opened, and a huge round head
with enormous ears at either side peeped out. So vast was the head and so
small the aperture that one of the lateral wings of the chubby face
caught on the sill, and the owner brought it away successfully with a
jerk and a perfectly good-humored and audible "flip."

"Who are you, and what do you want?" said a wide-gashed mouth, which,
with a squat, flattened-out nose and two merry little twinkling eyes,
completed this wonderful apparition.

The words were in themselves somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they
have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in
the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and
an episcopal benediction rolled in one.

"I am Hugo Gottfried of the Red Tower, come to see Master Gerard," I
replied. "Who may you be that asks so boldly?"

"I'll give you a stalk of rhubarb to suck if you can guess," was the
unexpected answer.

As I had never in my life seen anything in the least like the prodigy, it
was clearly impossible for me to earn the tart succulence of the summer
vegetable on such easy terms.

"I should say," I replied, "if the guess savor not of insolence, that one
might be forgiven for mistaking you for the Fool of the Family!"

The grin expanded till it wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It
seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then,
quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged
underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two
ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that
unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch.

"Pinked in the white, first time--no trial shot!" cried the object in the
doorway, cheerily. "I am the Fool of the Family. But not the only one!"

At this moment something happened behind--what, I could not make out
for some time. The head abruptly disappeared. There was a noise as of
floor-rugs being vigorously beaten, the door opened, and the most
extraordinary figure was shot out into the street. The head which I had
seen certainly came first, but so lengthy a body followed that it seemed
a vain thing to expect legs in addition. Yet, finally, two appe