"Thou imp," she cried, "it is one of thy tricks," and she made a
dive for the scullion, who ducked around the skirts of one of
the other women and so escaped for the time; but Long Jacob
wrinkled up his nose and sniffed. "Nay," said he, "me thinks
that there lieth some truth in the tale that the boy hath told,
for here is a vile smell of burned horn that the black one bath
left behind him."

It was the smell from the soft leather shoes that Hans had
burned.

The silence of night had fallen over the Castle of Trutz-
Drachen; not a sound was heard but the squeaking of mice
scurring behind the wainscoting, the dull dripping of moisture
from the eaves, or the sighing of the night wind around the
gables and through the naked windows of the castle.

The lid of the great dough trough was softly raised, and a face,
black with soot, peeped cautiously out from under it. Then
little by little arose a figure as black as the face; and One-
eyed Hans stepped out upon the floor, stretching and rubbing
himself.

"Methinks I must have slept," he muttered. " Hui, I am as stiff
as a new leather doublet, and now, what next is to become of me?
I hope my luck may yet stick to me, in spite of this foul black
soot!"

Along the middle of the front of the great hall of the castle,
ran a long stone gallery, opening at one end upon the court-yard