rue good wine, real Liebfrauenmilch, which I only
give to choice customers.'

'Welcome it is!' sang Guy to her arch looks; 'but I must pay for it.'

'Not a pfennig!' said the landlady.

'Not one?'

'Not one!' she repeated, with a stamp of the foot.

'In other coin, then,' quoth Guy; and folding her waist, which did not
this time back away, the favoured Goshawk registered rosy payment on a
very fresh red mouth, receiving in return such lively discount, that he
felt himself bound in conscience to make up the full sum a second time.

'What a man!' sighed the landlady, as she watched the Goshawk lead off
along the banks; 'courtly as a knight, open as a squire, and gentle as a
page!'

WERNER'S ECK

A league behind Andernach, and more in the wintry circle of the sun than
Laach, its convenient monastic neighbour, stood the castle of Werner, the
Robber Baron. Far into the South, hazy with afternoon light, a yellow
succession of sandhills stretched away, spouting fire against the blue
sky of an elder world, but now dead and barren of herbage. Around is a
dusty plain, where the green blades of spring no sooner peep than they
become grimed with sand and take an aged look, in accordance with the
ungenerous harvests they promise. The aridity of the prospect is relieved
on one side by the lofty woods of Laach, through which the sun setting
burns golden-red, and on the other by the silver sparkle of a narrow
winding stream, bordered with poplars, and seen but a glistening mile of
its length by all the thirsty hills. The Eck, or Corner, itself, is
thick-set with wood, but of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark patch
on the landscape. It served, however, entirely to conceal the castle, and
mask every movement of the wary and terrible master. A trained eye
advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the turrets over
the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls lies bare the
circuit of the land. Werner could rule with a glance the Rhine's course
down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower of Andernach.
He claimed that march as his right; but the Mosel was no hard ride's
distance, and he gratified his thirst for rapine chiefly on that river,
delighting in it, consequently, as much as his robber nature boiled over
the bound of his feudal privileges.

Often had the Baron held his own against sieges and restrictions, bans
and impositions of all kinds. He boasted that there was never a kn