What superfluous trouble a man with an evil conscience gives himself and others! I must needs lie, always a trial to me, to get the old man out of the way; and the honest Süssmilch, who had not a thought of being present at my interview with the stranger, had to go down two flights of stairs into the cellar.
"But we mustn't touch a drop ourselves," said the old man, warningly.
"Have no fear."
He went, after first introducing the visitor--a broad-shouldered deeply-bronzed man in sailor dress who was an entire stranger to me.
CHAPTER VII.
I gazed in mute astonishment at the stranger, whose looks and manner were, to use the mildest expression, very singular; but was really frightened when he, so soon as the door had closed behind the sergeant, without a word and with the haste of a man completely out of his senses, but still with the dexterity of a clown in a circus, began to tear off his clothes, and to my utter amazement appeared in precisely the same dress as that which now lay in its various elements at his feet, while a triumphant smile disclosed two rows of the whitest teeth in the world.
"Klaus!" I exclaimed, in joyous amazement.
The white teeth were now visible to the very last grinder. He seized both my extended hands, but remembered at once that such friendly manifestations did not belong to his part, and hurriedly whispered:
"Into them, quick! They will fit--folds will open out of themselves--only quick before he comes back!"
"And you, Klaus?"