The artist paid no heed to these gestures, but quietly requested his guests to make room for the boy.
A muffled head was suddenly thrust out from under the straw, a voice cried: "A hospital on wheels!" then the head vanished again like that of a fish, which has risen to take a breath of air.
"Very true," replied the artist. "You need not draw up your limbs so far, my worthy Lansquenet, but I must request these reverend gentlemen to move a little farther apart, or closer together, and make room for the sick lad on the leather sack."
While these words were uttered, one of the escort laid the still senseless boy under the tilt.
Magister Sutor noticed the snow that clung to Ulrich's hair and clothing, and while struggling to rise, uttered a repellent "no," while Stubenrauch hastily added reproachfully: "There will be a perfect pool here, when that melts; you gave us these places, Meister Moor, but we hardly expected to receive also dripping limbs and rheumatic pains. . . ."
Before he finished the sentence, the bandaged head again appeared from the straw, and the high, shrill voice of the man concealed under it, asked? "Was the blood of the wounded wayfarer, the good Samaritan picked up by the roadside, dry or wet?"
An encouraging glance from Sutor requested Stubenrauch to make an appropriate answer, and the latter in an unctuous tone, hastily replied: "It was the Lord, who caused the Samaritan to find the wounded man by the roadside—this did not happen in our case, for the wet boy is forced upon us, and though we are Samaritans. . . ."
"You are not yet merciful," cried the voice from the straw.
The artist laughed, but the soldier, slapping his thigh with his sound hand, cried:
"In with the boy, you fellows outside; here, put him on my right—move farther apart, you gentlemen down below; the water will do us no harm, if you'll only give us some of the wine in your basket yonder."