No one replied.
‘Speak! or I’ll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!’
‘Herr Baron!’ said Henker Rothhals impressively; ‘the matter is, that there’s something unholy among us.’
The Baron’s goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.
‘I’ll make an unholy thing of him that says it,’ and Werner lowered at them one by one.
‘Then I say it, Herr Baron!’ pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his frontispiece: ‘The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up there—Ah, it’s gone now; but where’s the man sitting this side saw it not?’
The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.
‘Now! will any rascal here please to say so?’
Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many in the act of confirming the assertion.
‘Stand out, Henker Rotthals!’