wk! so they
called me in my merry land. The cap sticks when it no longer fits. Then I
drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a feather.
Now, what would be my nickname?

"A change so sad, and a change so bad,
Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing:
Change is a curse, for it's all for the worse:
Age creeps up, and youth is flying!"

and so on, with the old song. But here am I, and yonder's a game that
wants harrying; so we'll just begin to nose about them a bit.'

He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of
the moonlight. The two figures and the taller one were evidently
observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind an
angle of the Cathedral.

'Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the
city,' said the stranger, holding out his hand.

Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the
stranger's hand.

'Good! that's how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me show
him the enemy's posts. Forward, this way!'

He turned from the Cathedral, and both slid along close under the eaves
and front hangings of the houses. Neither spoke. Farina felt that he was
in the hands of a skilful captain, and only regretted the want of a
weapon to make harvest of the intended surprise; for he judged clearly
that those were fellows of Werner's band on the look-out. They wound down
numberless intersections of narrow streets with irregular-built houses
standing or leaning wry-faced in row, here a quaint-beamed cottage, there
almost a mansion with gilt arms, brackets, and devices. Oil-lamps unlit
hung at intervals by the corners, near a pale Christ on crucifix. Across
the passages they hung alight. The passages and alleys were too dusky and
close for the moon in her brightest ardour to penetrate; down the streets
a slender lane of white beams could steal: 'In all conscience,' as the
good citizens of Cologne declared, 'enough for those heathen hounds and
sons of the sinful who are abroad when God's own blessed lamp is out.'
So, when there was a moon, the expense of oil was saved to the Cologne
treasury, thereby satisfying the virtuous.

After incessant doubling here and there, listening to footfalls, and
themselves eluding a chase which their suspicious movements aroused, they
came upon the Rhine. A full flood of moonlight burnished the knightly
river in glittering scales, and