These worthy associates were playing cards on the evening above-mentioned: they quarrelled; and the quarrel became more and more embittered. The long-suppressed hatred on the part of the baker and the woolspinner burst forth. The corporal retorted in terms equally offensive; he applied to them the epithets which they deserved. From words they proceeded to blows, and deadly weapons were laid hold of on both sides. But two male foes and a female fury, arrayed on one side, were too much even for a soldier. The corporal, seized and pinioned from behind by the woman, fell under the blows of the woolspinner. As yet the baker had rather hounded on the others than actually interfered in the scuffle; but when the corporal, stretched on the ground, and his head bleeding from a blow on the corner of the table, which he had received in falling, began to utter loud curses against them, and to threaten them all with public exposure--particularly that deceitful scoundrel the baker--the latter, prompted either by fear or hatred, whispered to the woolspinner and his wife that now was the time to make an end of him at once; and that if they did not, they were ruined. The deadly counsel was adopted: they fell upon the corporal; with a few blows life was extinct; the corpse, swimming in blood, lay at their feet. The deed was irrevocable; all three had shared in it; all were alike guilty, and had the same reason to tremble at the terrors of the law. With the body still warm at their feet, they entered into a solemn mutual engagement to be true to each other; to preserve inviolable secrecy as to the crime; and to extinguish, so far as in them lay, every trace of its commission. On the night of the murder, they had devised no plan for washing out the blood, and removing the body, which of course required to be disposed of, so that the disappearance of Ruhler might cause no suspicion. The terrors of conscience, and the apprehension of the consequences of their crime, had too completely occupied their minds for the moment. The next morning, however, they met again at the woolspinner's house to arrange their plans. Suddenly a noise was heard in the street,--it was the commotion caused by the news of the discovery of the robbery at Madame Andrecht's. The culprits stood pale and confounded. What was more probable than that an immediate search in pursuit of the robbers, or of the stolen articles, would take place into every house of this suspected and disreputable quarter. The woolspinner's house was the next to that which had been robbed; the flooring was at that moment wet with blood; the body of the murdered corporal lay in the cellar. Immediate measures must be resorted to, to stop the apprehended search, till time could be found for removing the body.