"Good morning, Mr. Host," said the musician. "Fine doings have you had here the night!"
"Students' tricks, students' tricks," said the host, suddenly uncomfortable, and slouching back into the kitchen as he spoke. His small eyes blinked furtively away from the sight of the mail-bags which Geiger-Hans now heaved on the table. "Bah!" pursued he, "I knew nothing! I busy not my head over gentry's doings or students' pranks. I go to sleep. They concern me not." Then he burst into a chuckle. "Popped him into a wine-cask, they did, in the backyard of The Bunch of Grapes, down at Cassel, where the fellow takes his nip before going his round. And they sat on the cask, the three of them, singing and smoking their pipes—drove past the French soldiers who looked on and laughed—out of the town gates, and not a finger lifted to stop them! Upon my soul, it was a fine joke! The cart is out yonder, and the cask, too!" he added, and chucked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the sunlit yard, shaking the while with a laugh that might have struck the observer as a trifle forced.
"Your jokers are still enjoying the sleep of a blameless conscience," said Geiger-Hans. "They lie in your best bedroom, Mr. Landlord. I locked them in, lest your good wine should lead their innocence and lightheartedness into new jokes ... that might be less excellent." He took the key from his pocket and tossed it on the table. "Release the birds when you think fit," he added.
The landlord took up the key with alacrity. Geiger-Hans remained awhile musingly fixing the outstretched form of the postilion; then a faint laugh shook him in his turn.
"In a wine cask," commented he. "A right old German jest, not without its gross humour...! He did aver they had kidnapped him: the creature spoke truth!"
Mine host almost perpetrated a wink, but checked himself and coughed.
"Oh, these students!" he reiterated vaguely.
"No wonder the beast smells like a bottle-brush," cried Steven, curling up his nose. Here, then, was the explanation of that stench of wine which had sickened him the night before, and which even now the sweeping breeze could scarcely conquer.
"The High-Born has perfect reason," cried the innkeeper, "for the rascal is sopped, within and without. If you squeezed him, he would run vinegar.—Well, so long as I am paid!..." was the philosophic parenthesis. "But the wife has shaken him in vain. There he lies, and it were perhaps as wholesome he should jog." His glance moved uneasily towards the mail-bag. "And what is to be done with that?" it seemed to ask.
"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, gravely. "Has he not his letters to deliver? They will be one post late; but in Westphalia, nowadays, we are not so mighty particular, are we? He must be freshened up, I think. Here, friend, I and my comrade will bring him to the trough, and you shall do the pumping. We'd better off with his jacket first. Never look so doubtful, Mr. Landlord. If his Majesty hears of it, you may be decorated. Think of that!"