“Only because he wouldn’t let me. I told him to be off, or I should spear him, and drew back and stretched out my javelin; when in the quietest manner, but I don’t know how, he twisted it out of my hand, broke it over his knee, as if it had been a mountebank’s wooden sword, and dashed the iron-headed piece fast into the ground, where you see it, fifty yards off.”
“Then why did you not rush on him with your sword, and despatch him at once? But where is your sword? it is not in your scabbard.”
The Dacian, with a stupid grin, pointed to the roof of the neighboring basilica, and said: “There, don’t you see it shining on the tiles, in the morning light?” Corvinus looked, and there indeed he saw what appeared like such an object, but he could hardly believe his own eyes.
“How did it get there, you stupid booby?” he asked.
The soldier twisted his moustache in an ominous way, which made Corvinus ask again more civilly, and then he was answered:
“He, or it, whatever it was, without any apparent effort, by a sort of conjuring, whisked it out of my hand, and up where you see it, as easily as I could cast a quoit a dozen yards.”
“And then?”
“And then, he and the boy, who came from round the pillar, walked off in the dark.”
“What a strange story!” muttered Corvinus to himself; “yet there are proofs of the fellow’s tale. It is not every one who could have performed that feat. But pray, sirrah, why did you not give the alarm, and rouse the other guards to pursuit?”
“First, Master Kornweiner, because, in my country, we will fight any living men, but we do not choose to pursue hobgoblins. And, secondly, what was the use? I saw the board that you gave into my care all safe and sound.”