The brief dialogue in the dungeon is curious and characteristic. The Count, straitened in his finances, covets the iron chest with a golden lining, taken by Benz from beneath the feet of Father Finch the suicide. In consideration of its receipt, he engages to rescue the executioner from his unpleasant position. The latter, although innocent, is by no means confident of acquittal, and accepts the terms. Then says the Count to the headsman, with touching confidence, “You have been known to me for many years as an honourable man, I require no other guarantee than your word. And I pledge my honour as a nobleman to rescue you, either by craft or by the strong hand.” Recourse to violence was unnecessary. The Count revived an old tribunal, long in disuse, which sat under an aged oak by the river’s brink, and consisted of himself alone. The council had little fancy for giving up their prisoner, but yielded to menaces in the emperor’s name, and Benz was brought before this primitive court. The burgomaster supported the accusation, but, on the other hand, seven nobly-born persons deposed on oath to the prisoner’s innocence, and Etzel the cup-bearer, a stalwart retainer of the Count’s, renowned in all the country-side for his reckless courage and powerful arm, threw his glove into the ring, and challenged to mortal combat any who should question it. Thrice the herald proclaimed the defiance, but none took it up; the sun went down, and the Count declared the charge unfounded and the prisoner free. This was the first and last time Count Ruprecht asserted his right to hold this penal tribunal. And subsequently an imperial decree declared the judgment null and the Count’s privilege obsolete. But before that came to pass, the headsman’s innocence was established, and the true culprit discovered.