Nearly always the adventurers would bring back with them pack-
horses laden with bales of goods. Sometimes, besides these, they
would return with a poor soul, his hands tied behind his back
and his feet beneath the horse's body, his fur cloak and his
flat cap wofully awry. A while he would disappear in some gloomy
cell of the dungeon-keep, until an envoy would come from the
town with a fat purse, when his ransom would be paid, the
dungeon would disgorge him, and he would be allowed to go upon
his way again.

One man always rode beside Baron Conrad in his expeditions and
adventures a short, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, with
sinewy arms so long that when he stood his hands hung nearly to
his knees.

His coarse, close-clipped hair came so low upon his brow that
only a strip of forehead showed between it and his bushy, black
eyebrows. One eye was blind; the other twinkled and gleamed like
a spark under the penthouse of his brows. Many folk said that
the one-eyed Hans had drunk beer with the Hill-man, who had
given him the strength of ten, for he could bend an iron spit
like a hazel twig, and could lift a barrel of wine from the
floor to his head as easily as though it were a basket of eggs.

As for the one-eyed Hans he never said that he had not drunk
beer with the Hill-man, for he liked the credit that such
reports gave him with the other folk. And so, like a half savage
mastiff, faithful to death to his master, but to him alone, he
went his sullen way and lived his sullen life within the castle
walls, half respected, half feared by the other inmates, for it