as very possible some one might have wished to buy some of your wares,
and then the pedlar in disguise would have been discovered."

"You forget it was a holiday," replied the other, "so that I had a good
excuse not to open my pack, and recommend my goods for sale, according
to the custom of pedlars. But I had sufficient proof of the security of
my disguise, for I sold a box of healing plaster to George von
Fronsberg, God knows, I would gladly have come to blows with him, and
given him an opportunity on the spot to make use of it. They were still
at high mass in the church, and no one in the inn; but I learned from
the master of the house, that the knights in the castle had agreed to a
truce till Easter Monday. When church service was over, many knights
and other men came, as I expected, into the room where I was, for their
morning's potation. I seated myself in a corner on the bench near the
stove, the proper place for people of my condition in the presence of
their superiors."

"Who did you see there?" inquired the Duke.

"I knew some of them by sight, and guessed who others were from their
conversation. There was Fronsberg, Alban von Closen, the Huttens,
Sickingen, and many others. Truchses von Waldburg came in shortly
after. When I saw him enter, I drew my cap deep over my face, for he
cannot have forgotten the whirl I gave him from his horse some fifteen
years ago by a thrust of my lance."

"Did you see Hans von Breitenstein among the rest?" asked Albert.

"Breitenstein?--not that I know; ah! yes, that's his name who will eat
a leg of mutton at a sitting. Well, they began to talk of the siege and
the truce, and some of them whispered to each other, but as I have very
good ears, I heard just what of all things was most essential to know.
Truchses related that he shot an arrow into the castle, with a note
attached to it, addressed to Ludwig von Stadion. It appears that he
must often have practised the same device, for the knights were not
astonished, when he added, that he had received an answer the same day
by similar means."

The Duke's countenance became clouded. "Ludwig von Stadion!" he cried
in agony; "I would have staked castles upon his fidelity! I loved him
so, that I satisfied all his desires, and he is the first to betray
me!"

"The answer said, that he, Stadion, with many others, being tired of
the contest, were more than half inclined to surrender; George von
Hewen, however, threatened to denounce