d intend to remain so?"

"Que como--puede ser--" faltered Ulrich, who confused by the question,
had strayed into the language in which he had been long accustomed to
think. But scarcely had the smith distinguished the foreign words, when
fresh anger seized him.

"Then go to perdition with your Spaniards!" was the furious answer.

The door slammed so that the house shook, and by degrees the smith's
heavy tread died away in the vestibule.

"All over, all over!" murmured the rejected son. Then calming himself, he
clenched his fist and muttered through his set teeth: "There shall be no
lack of ruin; whoever it befalls, can bear it."

While walking through the streets and across the squares, he devised plan
after plan, imagining what must come. Sword in hand he would burst the
old man's door, and the only booty he asked for himself should be Ruth,
for whom he longed, who in spite of everything loved him, who had
belonged to him from her childhood.

The next morning he negotiated cleverly and boldly with the commandant of
the Spanish forces in the citadel. The fate of the city was sealed! and
when he again crossed the great square and saw the city-hall with its
proud, gable-crowned central building, and the shops in the lower floor
crammed with wares, he laughed savagely.

Hans Eitelfritz had seen him in the distance, and shouted:

"A pretty little house, three stories high. And how the broad windows,
between the pillars in the side wings, glitter!"

Then he lowered his voice, for the square was swarming with men, carts
and horses, and continued:

"Look closer and choose your quarters. Come with me! I'll show you where
the best things we need can be found. Haven't we bled often enough for
the pepper-sacks? Now it will be our turn to fleece them. The castles
here, with the gingerbread work on the gables, are the guildhalls. There
is gold enough in each one, to make the company rich. Now this way!
Directly behind the city-hall lies the Zucker Canal. There live
stiff-necked people, who dine off of silver every day. Notice the
street!"

Then he led him back to the square, and continued "The streets here all
lead to the quay. Do you know it? Have you seen the warehouses? Filled to
the very roof! The malmsey, dry canary and Indian allspice, might
transform the Scheldt and Baltic Sea into a huge vat of hippocras."

Ulrich followed his guide from street to street. Wherever he looked, he
saw vast wealth in barns and maga