Adventure XVIII. How the Mischief Began to Brew.
One day a party of strangers came to Siegfried’s Nibelungen dwelling, and asked to speak with the king.
“Who are you? and what is your errand?” asked the porter at the gate.
“Our errand is to the king, and he will know who we are when he sees us,” was the answer.
When Siegfried was told of the strange men who waited below, and of the strange way in which they had answered the porter’s question, he asked,—
“From what country seem they to have come? For surely their dress and manners will betray something of that matter to you. Are they South-land folk, or East-land folk? Are they from the mountains, or from the sea?”
“They belong to none of the neighbor-lands,” answered the earl who had brought the word to the king. “No such men live upon our borders. They seem to have come from a far-off land; for they are travel-worn, and their sea-stained clothing betokens a people from the south. They are tall and dark, and their hair is black, and they look much like those Rhineland warriors who came hither with our lady the queen. And they carry a blood-red banner with a golden dragon painted upon it.”
“Oh, they must be from Burgundy!” cried the queen, who had overheard these words. And she went at once to the window to see the strangers, who were waiting in the courtyard below.
There, indeed, she saw thirty tall Burgundians, clad in the gay costume of Rhineland, now faded and worn with long travel. But all save one were young, and strangers to Kriemhild. That one was their leader,—an old man with a kind face, and a right noble bearing.