Two days later a very stout little one-eyed man, clad in a
leathern jerkin and wearing a round leathern cap upon his head,
came toiling up the path to the postern door of Trutz-Drachen,
his back bowed under the burthen of a great peddler's pack. It
was our old friend the one-eyed Hans, though even his brother
would hardly have known him in his present guise, for, besides
having turned peddler, he had grown of a sudden surprisingly
fat.

Rap-tap-tap! He knocked at the door with a knotted end of the
crooked thorned staff upon which he leaned. He waited for a
while and then knocked again - rap-tap-tap!

Presently, with a click, a little square wicket that pierced the
door was opened, and a woman's face peered out through the iron
bars.

The one-eyed Hans whipped off his leathern cap.

"Good day, pretty one," said he, "and hast thou any need of
glass beads, ribbons, combs, or trinkets? Here I am come all the
way from Gruenstadt, with a pack full of such gay things as thou
never laid eyes on before. Here be rings and bracelets and
necklaces that might be of pure silver and set with diamonds and
rubies, for anything that thy dear one could tell if he saw thee
decked in them. And all are so cheap that thou hast only to say,
'I want them,' and they are thine."

The frightened face at the window looked from right to left and