d complexions,
their eyes shining like rats, and their hats awry, appeared on the
threshold, followed by several others of a like description. One of
them, with a razor-back nose, and with a heavy club bound to his wrist,
stepped forward, crying: "Your passports, gentlemen!" Each one hastened
to comply with the request. Unfortunately, Wilfred, who stood near the
stove, was seized with a sudden trembling. The officer's experienced eye
detected his agitation, and as he paused in his reading to give him a
questioning look, my comrade conceived the unlucky idea of slipping
the watch into his boot; but before it had reached its destination, the
official slapped his hand against the other's hip, and said jeeringly:
"Something seems to trouble you here." To everybody's amazement, Wilfred
was seized with a fainting spell and dropped upon a bench pale as death.
Without further ceremony, Madoc, the Chief of Police, pulled up his
trousers' leg and drew out the watch with a burst of evil laughter. He
had no sooner glanced at it, however, than he became sober, and, turning
to his men, he cried in a terrible voice: "Let no one leave the room!
We have caught the whole band at last! Look! this is the watch of Dean
Daniel Van den Berg. Bring hither the handcuffs!" This order chilled us
to the marrow. A tumult followed, and I, believing that we were lost,
slid under a bench near the wall. As I was watching them chain the hands
of poor old Bremer and his sons, Karl and Ludwig, together with Heinrich
and Wilfred, I felt Annette's little hand brush against my cheek and
she drew me gently toward her--slowly and quietly toward the open cellar
door. I was unnoticed in the general confusion; I slipped within; the
door closed behind me. It was but the matter of a second. Scarcely had
I concealed myself, before I heard my poor comrades depart; then all
became silent.

I will leave you to imagine the nature of my reflections during an
entire day, crouched down behind a wine cask with my legs gathered under
me, and realizing that if a dog should enter the cellar, if the landlady
should take the notion to come downstairs to fill a pitcher, if the cask
should run out before night and were to be replaced; in short, if
the slightest thing went amiss, it would be all up with me. All these
thoughts and a thousand others passed through my mind, and I fancied
that I already saw my comrades being led to execution. Little Annette,
no less anxious than myself