may spend it—"

[Pg 13]

"You don't say so! And how came you by such a coin, constable?"

"I'll tell you that, too, mayor, only be careful not to let the Capuchins hear of it. I got the thaler in the Hochstatt marshes, from a bocksritter—"[2]

[2] Satyr.

[2]

"I hope you didn't bond your soul to him for it?" interrupted the mayor.

"Not I. I outwitted the devil by giving the ritter an ignorant Jew lad in my stead."

"You must keep that transaction a secret," cautioned the mayor; then he hastened to repeat what he had heard to the grand-duke.

"Would to heaven every thaler I possess were a breeding-penny!" exclaimed the high-born gentleman. "It would make the carrying on a war an easy matter."

From the day it became known that Constable Hugo possessed that never-failing treasure, a magic coin, and was in league with the all-powerful bocksritter, he rose in the esteem of his fellows.

Meanwhile Ehrenbreitstein and Coblentz continued under bombardment from the Frenchmen. The enemy's fire-pots never failed to find the grand-duke's[Pg 14] quarters, notwithstanding the fact that he changed them every day. This at last became so annoying that treason began to be suspected, and the duke offered a reward for the detection of the spy who gave the information to the enemy. That a spy was at work in the German camp was beyond question, though the outlets of both cities were so closely guarded that it would have been impossible for a living mortal to pass through them. Nor could the treason have been committed by means of carrier-pigeons, for, whatever of domestic fowl-kind had been in the cities had long since been devoured by the hungry citizens. The mayor, ever on the alert for transgressors, had his suspicions as to who might be the spy. Every man but one in the beleaguered cities fasted, lamented, prayed, cursed, wept, as the case might be, save this one man, who remained constantly cheerful, smiling, well-fed.

[Pg 14]

When one of 

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