'Chut! we are all heretics for the present!' Ludwig answered recklessly. 'A fig for a credo and a fig for a psalm! Give me a good horse and a good sword and fat farmhouses. I ask no more. Shall it be a short life and a merry one? The highest to have it?'
'Content,' I said, trying to fall into his humour.
'A ducat a throw?' he asked, posing the caster. A man, as he spoke, placed a saddle between us, while half a dozen others pressed round to watch us. The flame leaping up shone on their dark, lean faces and gleaming eyes, or picked out here and there the haft of a knife or the butt of a pistol. Some wore steel caps, some caps of fur, some gaudy handkerchiefs twisted round their heads. There were Spaniards, Bohemians, Walloons among them; a Croat or two; a few Saxons. 'Come,' cried the captain, rattling the dice-box. 'A ducat a throw, Master Peace? Between gentlemen?'
'Content,' I said, though my heart beat fast. I had never even seen men play so high.
'So!' growled a German who crouched beside me--a one-eyed man, fat and fair, the one fair-faced man in the company; ''tis a cock of a fine hackle!'
'See me strip him!' Captain Ludwig rejoined gleefully. And he threw and I threw, and I won; while the flame, leaping and sinking, flung its ruddy light on the walls of our huge, leafy chamber. Then he won. Then I won. I won again, again, again!
'He has the fiend's own luck!' a Pole cried with a curse.
'Steady, Ludwig!' quoth another. 'Will you be beaten by a clod-pate?'
'Fill his cup!' my opponent cried hardily. 'He has the knack of it! But I will strip him! Beat up the fire there! I can't see the spots. That is nine ducats you have won, good broad-piece! Throw away!'
I threw, and at it we went again, but now luck began to run against me, though slowly. The hollow rattle of the dice, the voices calling the numbers, the oath and the cry of triumph want on monotonously: went on--and I think the spirit of play had fairly got hold of me--when a stern voice suddenly broke in on our game.