“Nay,” said Katherine, “thou hast naught to do in the matter but to tell the Red-beard in what part of the castle the little Baron lies.”
“And what good would that do?” said Fritz, the swineherd.
“I know not,” said Katherine, “but I have promised the little one that thou wouldst find the Baron Conrad and tell him that much.”
“Thou hast promised a mare’s egg,” said her husband, angrily. “How shall I find the Baron Conrad to bear a message to him, when our Baron has been looking for him in vain for two days past?”
“Thou has found him once and thou mayst find him again,” said Katherine, “for it is not likely that he will keep far away from here whilst his boy is in such sore need of help.”
“I will have nothing to do with it!” said Fritz, and he got up from the wooden block whereon he was sitting and stumped out of the house. But, then, Katherine had heard him talk in that way before, and knew, in spite of his saying “no,” that, sooner or later, he would do as she wished.
Two days later a very stout little one-eyed man, clad in a leathern jerkin and wearing a round leathern cap upon his head, came toiling up the path to the postern door of Trutz-Drachen, his back bowed under the burthen of a great peddler’s pack. It was our old friend the one-eyed Hans, though even his brother would hardly have known him in his present guise, for, besides having turned peddler, he had grown of a sudden surprisingly fat.
Rap-tap-tap! He knocked at the door with a knotted end of the crooked thorned staff upon which he leaned. He waited for a while and then knocked again—rap-tap-tap!
Presently, with a click, a little square wicket that pierced the door was opened, and a woman’s face peered out through the iron bars.
The one-eyed Hans whipped off his leathern cap.