‘Why do you say luck, in that way?’ asked the good woman.
‘I will tell you, Frau Berbel,’ answered Wastei, lowering his tone. ‘It is the new coat that brought me luck to-day.’
‘It is a good coat,’ observed Berbel, in her usual manner.
‘Well, I came by it through a gold piece and a drink of that same good stuff.’
‘Cheap. It is a good coat.’
‘Do you remember, after the devil had flown away with the old wolf of Greifenstein—’
‘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.’