ned without any exchange of coin on his part, he
returned the same evening, and stealing a ladder in the neighbourhood,
placed it at a window of the warehouse, and got in. A man was writing in
the interior, but the robber looked at him steadily, and shouldering his
booty, withdrew. He was taken a second time, but escaped as before on
the same night.

His third escape was from a dark and damp vault in the prison of
Schneppenbach, where, having succeeded in penetrating to the kitchen,
he tore an iron bar from the window by main force, and leaped out at
hazard. He broke his leg in the fall, but finding a stick, managed
to drag himself along, in the course of three nights, to Birkenmuhl,
without a morsel of food, but on the contrary, having left some ounces
of skin and flesh of his own on the road.

Marianne Schoeffer was the first avowed mistress of Schinderhannes.
She was a young girl of fourteen, of ravishing beauty, and always
"se mettait avec une elegance extreme." Blacken Klos, one of the band,
an unsuccessful suitor of the lady, one day, after meeting with a
repulse, out of revenge carried off her clothes. When the outrage was
communicated to Schinderhannes, he followed the ruffian to a cave where
he had concealed himself, and slew him. It was Julia Blaesius, however,
who became the permanent companion of the young chief. The account
given by her of the manner in which she was united to the destiny of the
robber is altogether improbable. A person came to her, she said, and
mentioned that somebody wished to speak to her in the forest of Dolbach;
she kept the assignation, and found there a handsome young man who told
her that she must follow him--an invitation which she was obliged at
length by threats to accede to. It appears sufficiently evident,
however, that the personal attractions of Schinderhannes, who was then
not twenty-two, had been sufficient of themselves to tempt poor Julia
to her fate, and that of her own accord

"She fled to the forest to hear a love tale."

It may be, indeed, as she affirmed, that she was at first ignorant of
the profession of her mysterious lover, who might address her somewhat
in the words of the Scottish free-booter--

"A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien--
A bonnet of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green,
'Twas all of me you knew."

But it is known that afterwards she even accompanied him personally in
some of his adventures dressed in men's clothes.

T