'Quite right!' said a second in the same tone. 'Popish baggage!'

Hofman said nothing, but nodded, with a sly glance at me. Dietz the Minister nodded curtly also, and looked hard at the fire. The rest laughed.

For my part I felt very little like laughing. When I considered that this clumsy jest was being played at the expense of the poor girl, whom I had seen at her prayers, and that likely enough it was being played for the tenth time--when I reflected that these heavy fellows were sitting at their ease by this great fire watching the logs blaze and the ruddy light flicker up the chimney, while she sat in cold and discomfort, fearing every sound and trembling at every whisper, I could have found it in my heart to get up and say what I thought of it. And my speech would have astonished them. But I remembered, in time, that least said is soonest mended, and that after all words break no bones, and I did no more than sniff and shrug my shoulders.

Klink, however, chose to take offence in his stupid fashion. 'Eh?' he said. 'You are of another mind, Master Schwartz?'

'What is the good of talking like that,' I said, 'when you do not mean it?'

He puffed himself out, and after staring at me for a time, answered slowly: 'But what if I do mean it, Master Steward? What if I do mean it?'

'You don't,' I said. 'The man pays his way.'

I thought to end the matter with that. I soon found that it was not to be shelved so easily. For a moment indeed no one answered me. We are a slow speaking race, and love to have time to think. A minute had not elapsed, however, before one of the men who had spoken earlier took up the cudgels. 'Ay, he pays his way,' he said, thrusting his head forward. 'He pays his way, master; but how? Tell me that.'

I did not answer him.

'Out of the peasant's pocket!' the fellow replied slowly. 'Out of the plunder and booty of Magdeburg. With blood-money, master.'

'I ask no more than to meet one of his kind in the fields,' the man sitting next him, who had also spoken before, chimed in. 'With no one looking on, master. There would be one less wolf in the world then, I will answer for that. He pays his way? Oh, yes, he pays it here.'

I thought a shrug of the shoulders a sufficient answer. These two belonged to the company my lady had raised in the preceding year 

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