"It is an honor to me," interposed the baron, "to be obnoxious to the rebels."
"No doubt," politely chimed in Fink. "But this is only an additional motive to your friends to watch over your and your family's personal safety. As yet you are hardly strong enough to defend the castle from an assault of the rascals immediately around. The dozen laborers that I bring will form a guard for your house; they have arms, and partly know how to use them. I have bound them to the performance of certain military functions which will help to keep them in order. They can work a few hours less daily, and exercise during the interval, patrol, and, in so far as you, baron, may think it desirable, keep up a regular correspondence with the neighboring districts. Of course their support and payment is my affair, and I have accordingly provided for it. I wish to run up a slight building for them on the land they are to cultivate, but just now it will be well to keep them as near the castle as possible, and therefore I have to ask you for temporary quarters for all these as well as for myself."
"Just as you like, dear Fink," cried the baron, carried away by the young man's enterprising spirit; "all the room we have is at your disposal."
"Then allow me to suggest," said Anton, "that a room in the lower story should be fitted up as a guard-room. There arms and implements can be safely kept, and some of the men might nightly take up their quarters there. The rest must be billeted in the farm-yard. In this way they will get accustomed to consider the castle their place of rendezvous."
"Capital," said Fink, "so that the disturbance thus caused does not prove an annoyance to the ladies."
"The wife and daughter of an old soldier will gratefully submit to any measures taken for their safety," replied the baron, with dignity.
Accordingly, the new colony began to settle by universal consent. The wagons were unloaded, the manager and his men accommodated for the moment in the farm buildings.
The first thing they did was to free the furniture from its wrappings of straw and canvas, and to carry it into the apartments of their new master.
The castle servants stood round and looked with curiosity at its simple style. One article, however, excited such loud admiration, that Lenore joined the group of gazers. It was a small sofa of singular aspect. The legs and arms were made of the feet of some great beast of prey, and the cushions were covered with the bright yellow skin, all dotted over with regular black spots. At the back and on the bolsters were three large jaguars' heads, and the framework, instead of wood, was of beautifully carved ivory.
"How exquisite!" exclaimed Lenore.