e Hemp-dresser_: "Try, if you want; we are shut in well enough to
have no fear of you, and since you are impudent fellows, we shall not
answer you again."

Thereupon the hemp-dresser shut the garret window with a bang, and came
down into the room below by a step-ladder. Then he took the bride by
the hand, the young people of both sexes followed, and they all began to
sing and chatter merrily, while the matrons sang in piercing voices, and
shrieked with laughter in derision and bravado at those without who were
attempting an attack.

The besiegers, on their side, made a great hubbub. They discharged their
pistols at the doors, made the dogs growl, whacked the walls, shook
the blinds, and uttered frightful shrieks. In short, there was such a
pandemonium that nobody could hear, and such a cloud of dust that nobody
could see.

And yet this attack was all a sham. The time had not come for breaking
through the etiquette. If, in prowling about, anybody were to find an
unguarded aperture, or any opening whatsoever, he might try to slip in
unobserved, and then, if the carrier of the spit succeeded in placing
his roast before the fire, and thus prove the capture of the hearth, the
comedy was over and the bridegroom had conquered.

The entrances of the house, however, were not numerous enough for any to
be neglected in the customary precautions, and nobody might use violence
before the moment fixed for the struggle.

When they were weary of dancing and screams, the hemp-dresser began
to think of capitulation. He went up to his window, opened it with
precaution, and greeted the baffled assailants with a burst of laughter.

"Well, my boys," said he, "you look very sheep-faced. You thought there
was nothing easier than to come in, and you see that our defense is
good. But we are beginning to have pity on you, if you will submit and
accept our conditions."

_The Grave-digger_: "Speak, good people. Tell us what we must do to
approach your hearth."

_The Hemp-dresser_: "You must sing, my friends; but sing a song we don't
know,--one that we can't answer by a better."

"That 's not hard to do," answered the grave-digger, and he thundered in
a powerful voice: "'Six months ago, 'twas in the spring...'"

"'I wandered through the sprouting grass,'" answered the hemp-dresser
in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice. "You must be jesting, my poor
friends, singing us such time-worn songs. You see very well that we can
stop you at the