At five of the clock I lifted the great wolf's-head knocker of shining
brass which frowned above the door of Master Gerard von Sturm in the port
of the Weiss Thor. Hardly had I let it fall again when a small wicket,
apparently about two feet above my head, opened, and a huge round head
with enormous ears at either side peeped out. So vast was the head and so
small the aperture that one of the lateral wings of the chubby face
caught on the sill, and the owner brought it away successfully with a
jerk and a perfectly good-humored and audible "flip."

"Who are you, and what do you want?" said a wide-gashed mouth, which,
with a squat, flattened-out nose and two merry little twinkling eyes,
completed this wonderful apparition.

The words were in themselves somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they
have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in
the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and
an episcopal benediction rolled in one.

"I am Hugo Gottfried of the Red Tower, come to see Master Gerard," I
replied. "Who may you be that asks so boldly?"

"I'll give you a stalk of rhubarb to suck if you can guess," was the
unexpected answer.

As I had never in my life seen anything in the least like the prodigy, it
was clearly impossible for me to earn the tart succulence of the summer
vegetable on such easy terms.

"I should say," I replied, "if the guess savor not of insolence, that one