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. It was our old friend the one-eyed
Hans, though even his brother would hardly have known him in his present
guise, for, besides having turned peddler, he had grown of a sudden
surprisingly fat.

Rap-tap-tap! He knocked at the door with a knotted end of the crooked
thorned staff upon which he leaned. He waited for a while and then
knocked again--rap-tap-tap!

Presently, with a click, a little square wicket that pierced the door
was opened, and a woman's face peered out through the iron bars.

The one-eyed Hans whipped off his leathern cap.

"Good day, pretty one," said he, "and hast thou any need of glass beads,
ribbons, combs, or trinkets? Here I am come all the way from Gruenstadt,
with a pack full of such gay things as thou never laid eyes on before.
Here be rings and bracelets and necklaces that might be of pure silver
and set with diamonds and rubies, for anything that thy dear one could
tell if he saw thee decked in them. And all are so cheap that thou hast
only to say, 'I want them,' and they are thine."

The frightened face at the window looked from right to left and from
left to right. "Hush," said the girl, and laid her finger upon her lips.
"There! thou hadst best get away from here, poor soul, as fast as thy
legs can carry thee, for if the Lord Baron should find thee here talking
secretly at the postern door, he would loose the wolf-hounds upon thee."

"Prut," said one-eyed Hans, with a grin, "the Baron is too big a fly to
see such a little gnat as I; but wolf-hounds or no wolf-hounds, I
can never go hence without showing thee the pretty things that I have
brought from the town, even though my stay be at the danger of my own
hide."

He flung the pack from off his shoulders as he spoke and fell to
unstrapping it, while the round face of the lass (her eyes big with
curiosity) peered down at him through the grated iron bars.

Hans held up a necklace of blue and white beads that glistened like
jewels in the sun, and from them hung a gorgeous filigree cross. "Didst
thou ever see a sweeter thing than this?" said he; "and look, here is a
comb that even the silversmith would swear was pure silver all the way
through." Then, in a soft, wheedling voice, "Canst thou not let me in,
my li