ed a plan for
putting them in motion again."

"I fear, sir, that wiser heads than yours have been meditating upon that
project without avail."

"I should have been more gratified, Herr Goebel, if you had said 'older
heads.'"

The suspicion of a smile hovered for a brief instant round the shrewd,
firm lips of the merchant.

"Young sir, your gentle reproof is deserved. I know nothing of your
wisdom, and so should have referred to the age, and not to the equipment
of your head. It occurs to me, as I study you more closely, that I have
met you before. Your face seems familiar."

"'Tis but a chance resemblance, I suspect. Until very recently I have
been absorbed in my studies, and rarely left my father's house."

"I am doubtless mistaken. But to return to our theme. As you are
ignorant of my name and standing in this city, you are probably unaware
of the efforts already made to remove the deadlock on the Rhine."

"In that, Herr Goebel, you are at fault. I know an expedition of folly
was promoted at enormous expense, and that the empty barges, numbering
something like fivescore, now rest in the deepest part of the Rhine."

"Why do you call it an expedition of folly?"

"Surely the result shows it to be such."

"A plan may meet with disaster, even where every precaution has been
taken. We did the best we could, and if the men we had paid for the
protection of the flotilla had not, with base cowardice, deserted their
posts, these barges would have reached Cologne."

"Never! The defenders you chose were riff-raff, picked up in the gutters
of Frankfort, and you actually supposed such cattle, undisciplined and
untrained, would stand up against the fearless fighters of the Barons,
swashbucklers, hardened to the use of sword and pike. What else was to
be expected? The goods were not theirs, but yours. They had received
their pay, and so speedily took themselves out of danger."

"You forget, sir, or you do not know, that several hundred of them were
cut to pieces."

"I know that, also, but the knowledge does not in the least nullify my
contention. I am merely endeavoring to show you that the heads you spoke
of a moment ago were only older, but not necessarily wiser than mine. It
would be impossible for me to devise an expedition so preposterous."

"What should we have done?"

"For one thing, you should have gone yourselves, and defended your own
bales."

The merchant showed visible signs of a slowly rising anger, a