t the subject of a vile slander of an old friend of
mine," said the baron; "and those cursed poets, who believe everything,
and then persuade others to do so,--may the Devil fly away with
them!--kept it up."

Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch's sceptical mind. He forgot himself
and his surroundings.

"And that story of the Drachenfels?" he asked insinuatingly,--"the
dragon, you know. Was he too--"

The baron grinned. "A boar transformed by the drunken brains of the
Bauers of the Siebengebirge. Ach Gott! Ottefried had many a hearty laugh
over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service with the nervous
mother of the silly maiden."

"And the seven sisters of Schonberg?" asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.

"'Schonberg! Seven sisters!' What of them?" demanded the baron sharply.

"Why, you know,--the maidens who were so coy to their suitors,
and--don't you remember?--jumped into the Rhine to avoid them."

"'Coy? Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?" roared the baron,
purple with rage. "Hark ye, nephew! I like not this jesting. Thou
knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father. How
'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap WE might tell
another story. Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a
petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do other than he did.
And THIS is his reward? Ach Gott! 'Coy!' And THIS, I warrant, is the way
the story is delivered in Paris."

Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in a
guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the explanation.
Besides, he was on the eve of historic information; he was, as it were,
interviewing the past; and, whether he would ever be able to profit by
the opportunity or not, he could not bear to lose it. "And how about the
Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?" he asked glibly.

"It was said," observed the baron sardonically, "that when thou
disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven knows
where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some creature. Ach
Gott! I believe it! But a truce to this balderdash. And so thou wantest
to know of the 'coy' sisters of Schoenberg? Hark ye, Jann, that cousin
of thine is a Schonberg. Call you her 'coy'? Did I not see thy greeting?
Eh? By St. Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call
you her greeting 'coy'?"

Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt that
his explanation wou