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The Elector, in his joy at the recovery of even one child, was generous enough to send a pardon, but the messenger reached Freiburg too late, and a stone in the marketplace still marks the place of doom, while the grim effigy of Sir Konrad's head grins over the door of the Rathhaus.
The rest is silence. Twice was "the sight" vouchsafed me: in London when I told Eddie I would bespeak the boy's services; at Port Said when I bespoke them. Death on the eve of battle, death on a wedding day nothing so tragic save that most black mishap, death in action after peace has been signed. Death grins at my elbow. I cannot get him out of my thoughts.
'God bless him to you, my lady glory to ye both! and 'Oh, but he is a fine young gentleman, God bless him! resounded on all sides, while hats flew up in volleys that darkened the moon; and when at length, amid the broad delighted grins of the thronging domestics, whose sense of decorum precluded any more boisterous evidence of joy, they reached the parlour, then giving way to the fulness of her joy the widowed mother kissed and blessed him and wept in turn.
Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase.
"Guess it wouldn't spoil, sir," says I, switchin' off the duflicker. "Good!" says he. "I think I can employ your peculiar talents to better advantage for the next few hours. I trust that you are prepared to face the British War Office?" Suspectin' that he's about to indulge in his semi-annual josh, I only grins expectant.
Why should the coat survive, and not a particle of the passion that inspired it long ago? At last I confront him, face to face: and the villain grins recognition, completely unabashed. Nay, he cocks his eye with a significant glance under the slouch of his shapeless hat, and his arm points persistently and with intelligence up the road.
"He's got all the earmarks of a reg'lar invited guest, ain't he?" says I. "And unless you're achin' to start somethin', why not let me handle this 'Who the blazes are you? act?" He sees the point too, Mr. Robert does. He shrugs his shoulders and grins. "That's so," says he. "All right, Torchy. Full diplomatic powers, and if necessary I shall restrain Ferdie by the collar."
I even heard him ask the landlord if it was bolted down to its foundation." "Well, to own up to the honest truth," said Bluff, with one of his wide grins, "it was a regular buster of a howler. I never saw such wind or rain, and my ears ring even yet from the smashing thunder-claps.
And beside them sat a big, bony, healthy individual, whose face was shaded by a broad hat, yet not sufficiently shaded to hide the wide grins which crossed it and denoted the utmost merriment. He was rubbing his two big, strong hands together, laughing, chuckling, and gazing every moment out of the window. "My hat! My uncle! Crikey!" he exclaimed; "but that has really done it!
"She's getten a lad's jacket on! oh! oh! she's getten a lad's jacket on!" the children called aloud after her in the street, while their mothers came to the cottage-doors, wiping soap-suds from their arms, and stood staring as at a show; and even the big bland sailors lounging on the quay expanded into broad grins or solemnly winked at one another.
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