He and his sixteen knights were the terror of the country-side, and many there were who would have been glad to venture a bow shot at him had they dared. There seemed to be some delay about the opening of the gates, and a great chattering of underlings at the entrance, as if something unusual had occurred, whereupon the rough voice of the Baron roared out to know the cause that kept him waiting, and every one scattered, each to his own affair, leaving only the warder, who approached his master with fear in his face.
“My Lord,” he began, when the Baron had shouted what the devil ailed him, “there has been nailed against the outer gate; sometime in the night, a parchment with characters written thereon.”
“Then tear it down and bring it to me,” cried the Baron. “What’s all this to-do about a bit of parchment?”
The warder had been loath to meddle with it, in terror of that witchcraft which he knew pertained to all written characters; but he feared the Black Baron’s frown even more than the fiends who had undoubtedly nailed the documents on the gate, for he knew no man in all that well-cowed district would have the daring to approach the castle even in the night, much less meddle with the gate or any other belonging of the Baron von Grunewald; so, breathing a request to his patron saint (his neglect of whom he now remembered with remorse) for protection, he tore the document from its fastening and brought it, trembling, to the Baron. The knights crowded round as von Grunewald held the parchment in his hand, bending his dark brows upon it, for it conveyed no meaning to him. Neither the Baron nor his knights could read.
“What foolery, think you, is this?” he said, turning to the knight nearest him. “A Defiance?”
The knight shook his head. “I am no clerk,” he answered.
For a moment the Baron was puzzled; then he quickly bethought himself of the one person in the castle who could read.
“Bring hither old Father Gottlieb,” he commanded, and two of those waiting ran in haste towards the scullery of the place, from which they presently emerged dragging after them an old man partly in the habit of a monk and partly in that of a scullion, who wiped his hands on the coarse apron, that was tied around his waist, as he was hurried forward.
“Here, good father, excellent cook and humble servitor, I trust your residence with us has not led you to forget the learning you put to such poor advantage in the Monastery of Monnonstein. Canst thou construe this for us? Is it in good honest German or bastard Latin?”
“It is in Latin,” said the captive monk, on glancing at the document in the other’s hand.