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Sure there are other lasses besides thyself who would like to trade with a poor peddler who has travelled all the way from Gruenstadt just to please the pretty ones of Trutz-Drachen."
And now for the end of all. One day Otto stood uncertainly at the doorway of a room in the imperial castle, hesitating before he entered; and yet there was nothing so very dreadful within, only one poor girl whose heart fluttered more than his. Poor little Pauline, whom he had not seen since that last day in the black cell at Trutz-Drachen.
Nevertheless, my men were able to bring me out from that press and away, and we had bitten the Trutz-Drachen dogs so deep that they were too sore to follow us, and so let us go our way in peace. But when those fools of mine brought me to my castle they bore me lying upon a litter to my wife's chamber.
But, then, Katherine had heard him talk in that way before, and knew, in spite of his saying "no," that, sooner or later, he would do as she wished. Two days later a very stout little one-eyed man, clad in a leathern jerkin and wearing a round leathern cap upon his head, came toiling up the path to the postern door of Trutz-Drachen, his back bowed under the burthen of a great peddler's pack.
So at last they reached the chasm that yawned beneath the roadway, and there they stopped, for they had reached the spot toward which they had been journeying. It was Baron Henry of Trutz-Drachen who had thus come in the silence of the night time to the Dragon's house, and his visit boded no good to those within.
It was the smell from the soft leather shoes that Hans had burned. The silence of night had fallen over the Castle of Trutz-Drachen; not a sound was heard but the squeaking of mice scurring behind the wainscoting, the dull dripping of moisture from the eaves, or the sighing of the night wind around the gables and through the naked windows of the castle.
The next instant the Trutz-Drachen men were thundering at the door, but Schwartz Carl was already far up the winding steps. But now the others came pouring out from the gateway. "To the house," roared Baron Henry. Then suddenly a clashing, clanging uproar crashed out upon the night. Dong! Dong! It was the great alarm bell from Melchior's tower Schwartz Carl was at his post.
Here the Baron stopped short; then of a sudden, shaking his fist above his head, he cried out in his hoarse voice: "I swear by all the saints in heaven, either the red cock shall crow over the roof of Trutz-Drachen or else it shall crow over my house! The black dog shall sit on Baron Frederick's shoulders or else he shall sit on mine!"
"The dragon! the dragon!" roared Baron Conrad, in a voice of thunder, and with the energy of despair he dragged his prostrate foe toward the open side of the bridge. "Forward!" cried the chief of the Trutz-Drachen men, and down they rode upon the struggling knights to the rescue of their master in this new danger. But they were too late.
"Sire," said Abbot Otto, "we have humbly besought you by petition, in the name of your late vassal, Baron Conrad of Vuelph of Drachenhausen, for justice to this his son, the Baron Otto, whom, sire, as you may see, hath been cruelly mutilated at the hands of Baron Henry of Roderburg of Trutz-Drachen. He hath moreover been despoiled of his lands, his castle burnt, and his household made prisoner."
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