"It will afford me the utmost gratification if I can do so," he rejoined, filling up his cup, and letting out another button of his doublet to make room for its contents. "On what matter can I give you information?"
"Who is that very attractive damoiselle that occupies one of the apartments below?"
"Damoiselle!" he reiterated, while the paleness of anger overspread his face in the twilight; "you are mistaken, young gentleman; there is—assuredly there is no young lady there."
"Come, Herr, rally your thoughts," I continued, with a loud laugh, as the liquor mounted to my brain; "you will be sure to remember her—fair and handsome, with the most beautiful dark hair, and the longest eyelashes in the world. I warrant me, there is not a prettier jung-fer in all Holstein!"
"You mean Jung-fraü," replied Otto, with another of his quiet but obnoxious smiles, and this time the fellow was laughing in earnest, for I had made—what I afterwards learned to be—a mistake; "but I beg to assure you, that no young damoiselle could be hereabout without my knowledge."
"I am aware of that," I continued in my tone of banter; "but, pray, make no more assertions; I have no wish to pry into your little secrets, Herr—not I, though doubtless this damoiselle is the prettiest little woman in Glückstadt."
"Were this St. John's night, when our fairies and white women are all abroad, I would swear thou hadst seen a Trold; for there is no woman here but the old crone my housekeeper, to whose smiles thou art welcome. There is none, I vow to you, by the soul of Holger Danske!"
Confounded by the earnestness of the man, struck by a sudden and ferocious gleam that passed over his glassy eyes, and supposing there was in the affair some strange mystery with which I had no right to meddle, I dropped the subject, and assisted to fill and refill the tankard; nor did we separate until the midnight moon was shining on the broad waters of the Elbe, and the strong round tower of Glückstadt.
Then Otto Koskilde retired, and the moment he was gone we rolled our tartan plaids around us, and lay down on the hard boarded floor, with our targets and claymores for pillows.