“We worked over him, calling him by name, propping him up against the wall, only to have him sag back; and finally, at the suggestion of one of the truckmen—he was in a half-comatose state really from the liquor he had absorbed—we carried him out into the stable yard, and I held his shapely head, with its beautiful hair a-frowze, while a stream of cold water from the pump struck the back of his head and neck.
“The poor fellow stared around wildly as the chill reached his nerves and tried to put his arm around me, then he toppled over again and lay like a log. Nothing was left but to pick him up bodily and carry him home; that I did with Fritz’s, the stable-boy’s, help, Gretchen carrying his cap, and the landlady following behind with his coat, which I had stripped off when his head went under the pump. The bystanders didn’t care—one drunken man more or less made no difference—but both of the women were in tears, ‘Poor Wilhelm! Somebody had drugged him; some wicked men had played a trick, etc., etc. I thought of the Rudesheimer, and then dismissed it from my mind. Something stronger than Rhine wine had wrought this change.
“We laid him flat out on a cot in a room on the second floor, and dragged it near the open window so he could get the air from the garden, and left him, I taking the precaution to lock the door to prevent his staggering downstairs and breaking his neck.
“The next morning, before I was dressed, in fact, a row downstairs brought me into the hall outside my door, where I stood listening over the banister. Then came the tramp of men, and three gendarmes mounted the steps and halted at Fiddles’s door.
“Bang! bang! went the hilt of a short-sword on the panel. ‘Open, in the name of the law.’
“‘What for?’ I demanded. Getting drunk was not a crime in Rosengarten, especially when the offender had been tucked away in bed.
“‘For smashing the face of a citizen—a worthy cobbler—the night before, at the hour of eight,—just as he was closing his shutters. The cobbler lay insensible until he had been found by the patrol. He had, however, recognized Fuedels-Shimmer as the—’
“‘But, gentleman, Herr Fiddles was dead drunk at eight o’clock; he hasn’t stirred out of the room since. Here is the key,’ and I unlocked the door and we all stepped in, Gretchen and the landlady close behind. They had told the officers the same story downstairs, but they would not believe it.
“At the intrusion, Fiddles rose to a sitting posture and stared wonderingly. He was sober enough now, but his heavy sleep still showed about his eyes.
“The production of the key, my positive statement, backed by the women, and Fiddles’s wondering gaze, brought the gendarmes to a halt for a moment, but his previous arrest was against him, and so the boy was finally ordered to put on his clothes and accompany them to the lock-up.