r cover, and our appetite was fading away into
history. Sperver had filled the "wieder komm," the "come again," with old
wine of Brumberg; the sparkling froth fringed its ample borders; he
presented it to me, saying--

"Drink the health of Yeri-Hans, lord of Nideck. Drink to the last drop,
and show them that you mean it!"

Which was done.

Then he filled it again, and repeating with a voice that re-echoed among
the old walls, "To the recovery of my noble master, the high and mighty
lord of Nideck," he drained it also.

Then a feeling of satisfied repletion stole gently over us, and we felt
pleased with everything.

I fell back in my chair, with my face directed to the ceiling, and my
arms hanging lazily down. I began dreamily to consider what sort of a
place I had got into.

It was a low vaulted ceiling cut out of the live rock, almost
oven-shaped, and hardly twelve feet high at the highest point. At the
farther end I saw a sort of deep recess where lay my bed on the ground,
and consisting, as I thought I could see, of a huge bear-skin above, and
I could not tell what below, and within this yet another smaller niche
with a figure of the Virgin Mary carved out of the same granite, and
crowned with a bunch of withered grass.

"You are looking over your room," said Spencer. "_Parbleu!_ it is none of
the biggest or grandest, not quite like the rooms in the castle. We are
now in Hugh Lupus's tower, a place as old as the mountain itself, going
as far back as the days of Charlemagne. In those days, as you see, people
had not yet learned to build arches high, round, or pointed. They worked
right into the rock."

"Well, for all that, you have put me in strange lodgings."

"Don't be mistaken, Fritz; it is the place of honour. It is here that the
count put all his most distinguished friends. Mind that: Hugh Lupus's
tower is the most honourable accommodation we have."

"And who was Hugh Lupus?"

"Why, Hugh the Wolf, to be sure. He was the head of the family of Nideck,
a rough-and-ready warrior, I can tell you. He came to settle up here with
a score of horsemen and halberdiers of his following. They climbed up
this rock--the highest rock amongst these mountains. You will see this
to-morrow. They constructed this tower, and proclaimed, 'Now we are the
masters! Woe befall the miserable wretches who shall pass without paying
toll to us! We will tear the wool off their backs, and their hide too, if
need be. From this watch