Avoiding the hotel--on consideration, Chute saw no reason why _he_ should change his quarters--he had 'done' all Lubeck, seen the Dom or Cathedral, a huge red-brick edifice of the twelfth century, with its wonderful screen, stone pulpit, and brass font; the Marien Kirche, with its astronomical clock, where daily the figures of the seven Electors pass in review, and bow before the Emperor; the wonderful old Rathhaus; and the stone in the marketplace whereon 'the Byng' of Lubeck, Admiral Mark Meyer, was judicially murdered for not fighting a Danish fleet; the wood carvings in the Schusselbuden Strasse; and the famous letter of Sir William Wallace to the Hans cities--the first 'free trade' document the world ever saw; and when evening was come again he found himself seated, somewhat weary and almost alone, at the long board of the _table d'hôte_ in the great dining-room. A tempestuous sun was setting in the west, against the crimson glow of which the black kites, like flies amid wine, seemed to float above the trees of the Linden Platz; and the waters of the Trave and the Wakenitz were reddened, as they flowed past the timber-clothed ramparts, the copse woods and turfy moors, towards the sea. Something portentous seemed in the air, the sky, and even in the manner of the people of Lubeck that evening. Trevor Chute observed that the Prussian officers who were at the table, or smoking under the verandah outside the windows, all talked confidentially of something that was expected--he could not make out what, and the military eye of Chute observed that, since noon, double sentinels had been posted at the Burg Thor, the Rathhaus, and elsewhere. The thoughts of Trevor Chute went back over the many stirring events of his past life since he had known Clare and been rent from her--events full of sporting excitement, of military peril, and Indian adventures, of rapid change by land and sea, of aimless wanderings like the present, of wet night marches and wild gallops, amid the scorching heats of the Punjaub, when men fell by the wayside, stricken and foaming at the mouth with sunstroke, or writhing with the deadlier cholera, and he knew not why all this retrospect occurred to him. Was he on the eve of any great danger? It almost seemed so. The evening closed in dark and gloomy, and though the atmosphere was stifling, Chute perceived that the lower windows of the hotel were being all closed and barricaded. He was then informed by the _Ober Kellner_ that a serious riot was expected by 'His High Wisdom, the Senior Burgomaster,' among the tradesmen and working population, who were all 'on strike,' and hence the doubling of the guards on the town house and at the city gates.