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Page 15
Which was done.
Then he filled it again, and repeating with a voice that re-echoed among
the old walls, "To the recovery of my noble master, the high and mighty
lord of Nideck," he drained it also.
Then a feeling of satisfied repletion stole gently over us, and we felt
pleased with everything.
I fell back in my chair, with my face directed to the ceiling, and my
arms hanging lazily down. I began dreamily to consider what sort of a
place I had got into.
It was a low vaulted ceiling cut out of the live rock, almost
oven-shaped, and hardly twelve feet high at the highest point. At the
farther end I saw a sort of deep recess where lay my bed on the ground,
and consisting, as I thought I could see, of a huge bear-skin above, and
I could not tell what below, and within this yet another smaller niche
with a figure of the Virgin Mary carved out of the same granite, and
crowned with a bunch of withered grass.
"You are looking over your room," said Spencer. "_Parbleu!_ it is none of
the biggest or grandest, not quite like the rooms in the castle. We are
now in Hugh Lupus's tower, a place as old as the mountain itself, going
as far back as the days of Charlemagne. In those days, as you see, people
had not yet learned to build arches high, round, or pointed. They worked
right into the rock."
"Well, for all that, you have put me in strange lodgings."
"Don't be mistaken, Fritz; it is the place of honour. It is here that the
count put all his most distinguished friends. Mind that: Hugh Lupus's
tower is the most honourable accommodation we have."
"And who was Hugh Lupus?"
"Why, Hugh the Wolf, to be sure. He was the head of the family of Nideck,
a rough-and-ready warrior, I can tell you. He came to settle up here with
a score of horsemen and halberdiers of his following. They climbed up
this rock--the highest rock amongst these mountains. You will see this
to-morrow. They constructed this tower, and proclaimed, 'Now we are the
masters! Woe befall the miserable wretches who shall pass without paying
toll to us! We will tear the wool off their backs, and their hide too, if
need be. From this watch-tower we shall command a view of the far
distance all round. The passes of the Rh�thal, of Steinbach, Koche Plate,
and of the whole line of the Black Forest are under our eye. Let the Jew
pedlars and the dealers beware!' And the noble fellows did what they
promised. Hugh the Wolf was at their head. Knapwurst told me all about it
sitting up one night."
"Who is Knapwurst?"
"That little humpback who opened the gate for us. He is an odd fellow,
Fritz, and almost lives in the library."
"So you have a man of learning at Nideck?"
"Yes, we have, the rascal! Instead of confining himself to the porter's
lodge, his proper place, all the day over he is amongst the dusty books
and parchments belonging to the family. He comes and goes along the
shelves of the library just like a big cat. Knapwurst knows our story
better than we know it ourselves. He would tell you the longest tales,
Fritz, if you would only let him. He calls them chronicles--ha, ha!"
And Sperver, with the wine mounting a little into his head, began to
laugh, he could hardly say why.
"So then, Gideon, you call this tower, Hugh's tower the Hugh Lupus
tower?"
"Haven't I told you so already? What are you so astonished at?"
"Nothing particular."
"But you are. I can see it in your face. You are thinking of something
strange. What is it?"
"Oh, never mind! It is not the name of the tower which surprises me. What
I am wondering at is, how it is that you, an old poacher, who had never
lived anywhere since you were a boy but amongst the fir forests, between
the snowy summits of the Wald Horn and the passes of the Rh�thal--you
who, during all your prime of life, thought it the finest of fun to laugh
at the count's gamekeepers, and to scour the mountain paths of the
Schwartzwald, and boat the bushes there, and breathe the free air, and
bask in the bright sunshine amongst the hills and valleys--here I find
you, at the end of sixteen years of such a life, shut up in this red
granite hole. That is what surprises me and what I cannot understand.
Come, Sperver, light your pipe, and tell me all about it."
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