was turned and helped him to put the flowing cloak straight upon his
shoulders.

"Thank you, Lisa, thank you," said Sebastian in German, without looking
round. By accident Barlasch had performed one of Lisa's duties, and
the master of the house was too deeply engaged in thought to notice
any difference in the handling or to perceive the smell of snuff that
heralded the approach of Papa Barlasch. Sebastian took his hat and went
out closing the door behind him, and leaving Barlasch, who had followed
him to the door, standing rather stupidly on the mat.

"Absent-minded--the citizen," muttered Barlasch, returning to the
kitchen, where he resumed his seat on a chair by the open door. He
scratched his head and appeared to lapse into thought. But his brain was
slow as were his movements. He had been drinking to the health of the
bride. He thumped himself on the brow with his closed fist.

"Sacred-name-of-a-thunderstorm," he said. "Where have I seen that face
before?"

Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay. Although it was dusk,
the granaries were still at work. The river was full of craft and the
roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one pattern, too big
and too heavy for roads that are laid across a marsh.

He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of the
Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes Thor. Here
the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a crowd, peering over
each other's shoulders towards the roadway and the bridge. Sebastian
was a tall man, and had no need to stand on tip-toe in order to see the
straight rows of bayonets swinging past, and the line of shakos rising
and falling in unison with the beat of a thousand feet on the hollow
woodwork of the drawbridge.

The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the
road to Elbing and Konigsberg.

"It is the same," said a man standing near to Sebastian, "at the Hohes
Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to Konigsberg by
way of Dessau."

"It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going," was the significant
answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been at Eylau, for he
had a crushed look.

"But war is not declared," said the first speaker.

"Does that matter?"

And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that invites
opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He was better
clad than they. He must know more than