" Hush, for mercy's sake ! " exclaimed Berbel. " You must
not talk like that — "

" He was a wolf. I believe he would have torn a poor free-
shot like me to pieces if he could. I had him after me once,
and I remember his eyes. If he had been ten years younger,
and if I had not dropped through a hole I knew of so that he
thought I had fallen over the Falcon Stone beyond Zavelstein,
he would have caught me. He looked for my body two days
with his keepers. Well, the devil got him, as you know, for
he killed himself. And after that the young lord was ill and
you sent me off at night for news, because Fraulein Hilda could
not sleep. Well, you remember how I brought back the bad
news, and a gold piece Herr Rex had given me, and which I
supposed must be for your ladies because they had not many at
that time, though I thought it queer. Good, and the baroness
said it must be for me — you remember all that ? "

" Very well," replied Berbel, suppressing a smile by force of
habit.
" So I took the gold piece, but I would not use it nor change
it, for I said it was the price of bad news, though I owed the
host at the Ox three marks and a half at the time. I took my
gold piece and I put it in a safe place, where nobody would
have thought of looking for it."

" Where was that ? " asked Berbel, as he paused.
