The Baron sprang to his feet with an oath. "We shall go on no such hare-brained excursion," he cried.
"Pardon," said the Emperor, calmly, "but I shall go, most assuredly. I am not the man to propose a test and then shrink from it. But it would be wiser for you to remain here, ready to stand sponsor for me with the Archbishop, should I be captured. I assure you, good Siegfried, your testimony will have much greater weight if you come to the Palace dry, than if you are a dripping accomplice, rescued by his men-at-arms."
"Where you go, I go," answered the Baron, nonplussed.
The boatman put his head up through the trap-door and announced that the skiff was ready. The Emperor laughed as he flung his cloak over his shoulders; the Baron did likewise, but there was disquietude on his brow.
"There is like to be enough of meat," said the archer, seeing they were about to depart, "but if you are to be long absent I would fain be put into communication with the hogshead from which this most excellent flagon is accustomed to be replenished. Wine, when a man is eating, makes fair escort for good food down the throat, but one is scarcely able thus to judge satisfactorily of its quality, missing the aroma which the more leisurely drinking allows the palate to become acquainted with. I hold that the proper time for doing justice to a good wine is when hunger has been so thoroughly appeased that——"
"The barrel is in the adjoining room," replied Siegfried, as he disappeared down the trap-door.
The boatman, sitting in the stern and using a paddle, propelled the skiff through the water-doorway and out upon the broad bosom of the river. His two passengers reclined near the prow and thus they floated down with the current, passing the numerous small buildings, all dark, which composed the little hamlet of Zurlauben. The huge square bulk of the Archbishop's Palace rose in the moonlight at the further end of the village, showing some lights in the upper rooms. The man in the stern of the boat sat silent as a statue of Death, and almost as motionless. He allowed the boat to drift with the current, making no effort to accelerate its progress by use of the paddle that trailed in the water behind, contenting himself by giving it a slight deflection to right or left and thus direct the impetus of the craft this way or that. The tall pointed windows of the large hall of the Palace, which, filled with stained glass, gave a semi-ecclesiastical appearance to the river front of the edifice, glowed softly with coloured light, like jewelled pictures against the dark wall, showing that the room within was still illuminated. The two passengers now reclined with heads towards the prow, their cloaks entirely concealing their persons, and in the silence and the darkness, with the mute figure upright in the stern, the weird craft looked as if Charon were its master, ferrying two lost souls over the Styx.
As the boat floated noiselessly as a leaf on the surface of the water into the great shadow which the Palace threw upon the river, the stillness was broken by a woman's voice. She hissed out the one word—
"Laggard!"