others of a like description. One of them, with a razor-back nose, and with a heavy club bound to his wrist, stepped forward, crying: “Your passports, gentlemen!” Each one hastened to comply with the request. Unfortunately, Wilfred, who stood near the stove, was seized with a sudden trembling. The officer’s experienced eye detected his agitation, and as he paused in his reading to give him a questioning look, my comrade conceived the unlucky idea of slipping the watch into his boot; but before it had reached its destination, the official slapped his hand against the other’s hip, and said jeeringly: “Something seems to trouble you here.” To everybody’s amazement, Wilfred was seized with a fainting spell and dropped upon a bench pale as death. Without further ceremony, Madoc, the Chief of Police, pulled up his trousers’ leg and drew out the watch with a burst of evil laughter. He had no sooner glanced at it, however, than he became sober, and, turning to his men, he cried in a terrible voice: “Let no one leave the room! We have caught the whole band at last! Look! this is the watch of Dean Daniel Van den Berg. Bring hither the handcuffs!” This order chilled us to the marrow. A tumult followed, and I, believing that we were lost, slid under a bench near the wall. As I was watching them chain the hands of poor old Bremer and his sons, Karl and Ludwig, together with Heinrich and Wilfred, I felt Annette’s little hand brush against my cheek and she drew me gently toward her—slowly and quietly toward the open cellar door. I was unnoticed in the general confusion; I slipped within; the door closed behind me. It was but the matter of a second. Scarcely had I concealed myself, before I heard my poor comrades depart; then all became silent.
I will leave you to imagine the nature of my reflections during an entire day, crouched down behind a wine cask with my legs gathered under me, and realizing that if a dog should enter the cellar, if the landlady should take the notion to come downstairs to fill a pitcher, if the cask should run out before night and were to be replaced; in short, if the slightest thing went amiss, it would be all up with me. All these thoughts and a thousand others passed through my mind, and I fancied that I already saw my comrades being led to execution. Little Annette, no less anxious than myself, closed the door prudently each time that she came up from the cellar. At last, I heard the old woman cry: “Leave the door open! Are you mad to lose half your time in shutting it?” After that the door remained ajar, and from my nook in the shadows I could see the tables gradually filling with new customers.
Stories, discussions, and exclamations concerning the famous band of robbers reached my ears. “Oh! the rascals!” cried one; “thank Heaven they are caught. What a scourge they have been to Heidelberg! No one dared risk himself in the streets after ten o’clock, and even business was beginning to suffer; but now things are changed and in a fortnight it will all be forgotten.”
“Those musicians of the Black Forest are a lot of bandits!” chimed in another; “they make their way into the houses under pretext of playing, and meanwhile they are examining the locks, bolts, chests, and windows, and some fine morning we hear that such a one has had his throat cut in his bed; that his wife has been murdered, his children strangled, and his house rifled from top to bottom. The wretches should be strung up without mercy! Then we might have some peace.”
“The whole village will turn out to see them hanged,” said Mother Grédel, “and as for me, it will be the happiest day of my life.”
“Do you know, if it hadn’t been for Dean Daniel’s watch, no trace of them would have been found. Last night the watch disappeared, and this morning the Dean notified the police. An hour later, Madoc bagged them all! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
The entire roomful burst out laughing, and I trembled with shame, indignation, and fear in turn.
Meanwhile, the night drew on. Only a few loungers remained. The people of the inn, who had sat up the night before, were anxious to get to bed. I heard the landlady yawn and mutter: “Oh, dear! How long before we can get some sleep?” Most of the tipplers comprehended the force of this remark and withdrew; only one remained, sitting half asleep before his glass. The watchman, going his rounds, woke him up and he went off grumbling and staggering.
“At last!” I said to myself; “this is good luck; Mother Grédel has gone to bed and Annette will not be slow in getting me out.” With this agreeable prospect in view, I had already stretched out my stiffened limbs, when Dame Grédel’s voice reached my ear: “Annette, go and lock up, and don’t forget to bolt the door! I am going down cellar.” It appeared that this was a wise custom of hers to assure herself that everything was right.
“But, madame,” stammered the girl, “the cask isn’t empty. You needn’t bother to—”
“Mind your own business,” interrupted the mistress, whose candle was already lighting up the passageway. I had barely time to squat down again behind the cask, when the old woman, stooping beneath the low, dingy ceiling, passed from one keg to another, mumbling as she went: “Oh! the little wretch. How she lets the wine leak. I’ll teach her to close the spigots tighter; did ever any one see the like?” The candle threw great shadows against the damp wall. I huddled closer and closer. Suddenly, just as I thought the visit happily ended, and was beginning to breathe easier again, I heard the old creature give a sigh so long and so full of woe that I knew something unusual was happening. I risked just the least glance, and I saw Dame Grédel Dick, her under jaw dropped and her eyes sticking out of her head, staring at the bottom of the barrel behind which I lay. She had caught sight of one of my feet underneath the joist that served as a wedge to keep the cask in place. She evidently believed she had discovered the chief of the robbers concealed there for the purpose of strangling her during the night. I formed a sudden resolution. “Madame, for God’s sake, have pity on me!” I cried: “I am—” Without looking at me, or listening to a word I said, she set up an ear-splitting shriek and started up the stairs as quickly as her great weight would permit. Seized with inexpressible terror, I clung to her skirt and went down on my knees. This only made matters worse. “Help! seize the assassin! Oh, my God! release me! Take my money! Oh! Oh!”
It was horrible. In vain did I cry: “Only look at me, my dear madame; I am not what you think me!” She was beside herself with fear; she raved and screamed in such piercing tones that had we not been underground, the whole neighborhood would inevitably have been aroused. In this extremity, consulting only my rage, I overturned her, and gaining the door before her, I slammed it in her face, taking care to slip the bolt. During the struggle the candle had been extinguished and Dame Grédel was left in the dark. Her cries grew fainter and fainter. I stared at Annette, giddy, and with hardly strength enough left to stand. Her agitation equaled mine. We neither of us seemed able to speak, and stood listening to the expiring cries of the mistress, which soon ceased altogether. The poor woman had fainted.
“Oh! Kasper,” cried Annette, wringing her hands, “what is to be done? Fly! fly! You may have been heard! Did you kill her?”
“Kill her? I?”
“I am so glad! But fly! I will open the door for you.” She unbarred it, and I fled into the street, without stopping even to thank her; but I was so terrified and there was not a moment to lose. The night was inky black; not a star in the sky, and the street lamps unlighted. The weather was abominable; it was snowing hard and the wind howled dismally.
Not until I had run for a good half-hour did I stop to take breath. Imagine my horror when I found myself directly opposite the Pied de Mouton Tavern. In my terror I had run around the square a dozen times for aught I knew. My legs felt like lead and my knees tottered under me.
The inn, but a moment before deserted, swarmed like a bee-hive, and lights danced about from window to window. It was evidently filled with the police. And now, at my wits’ end, desperate, exhausted with cold and hunger, and not knowing where to find refuge, I resolved upon the strangest possible course.
“By Jove,” I said to myself, “as well be hanged as leave my bones on the road to the Black Forest.” And I walked
