“I quite agree with you. There are eighteen of you, all armed with swords, while I control but one blade.”
Saying this he unfastened his cloak, which he had put on in the gathering chill of the evening, and untying from his belt a well-filled wallet, held it up to their gaze.
“As this bag undisputedly belongs to me, I have a right to dispose of it as I choose. I therefore give it to the brook, whose outcry is as insistent as yours, and much more musical.”
“Stop, Roland, stop!” shouted Ebearhard, but the warning came too late. The young man flung the bag into the torrent, where it disappeared in a smother of foam. He rose to his feet and drew his sword.
“If you wish a fight now, it will be for the love of it, no filthy lucre being at stake.”
“By Plutus, you are an accursed fool!” cried the spokesman, making no further show of aggression now that nothing but steel was to be gained by a contest.
“A fool; yes!” said Roland. “And therefore the better qualified to lead all such. Now go to Sonnenberg, or go to Hades!”
The men did neither. They sat down under the trees, ate their supper, and drank their wine.
“Will you dine with me?” said Roland, approaching his two gloomy lieutenants, who stood silent at some distance from the circle formed by the others.
“Yes,” said Greusel sullenly, “but I would have dined with greater pleasure had you not proven the spokesman’s words true.”