'You are too ill to travel just now, and must remain with kind Madame Wyburg for a few days till the exact address of Mrs. Deroubigne is found,' said Sleath, in the most persuasive tone he could adopt; 'but here comes the master of the house,' he added, as a very singular figure appeared. A man short in stature, but thick-set and powerfully built, with leery grey eyes, dissipated and bloated features, and a ragged red moustache, wearing a quaint garb, entirely black, with a plaited ruff round his neck, a wig curled and powdered, a short Spanish cloak, and a long Toledo sword, with a Mother Hubbard hat on his head, sharply pointed, and about two feet high. This strange apparition of the sixteenth century doffed his steeple-crowned hat to Ellinor, who after a time discovered that the Herr Wyburg, among various other less respectable avocations, whereby to eke out a living, was one of the sixteen _Reiten-Diener_, or hired mourners, who--instead of the friends of the deceased--attend funeral processions in Hamburg, carrying out Charles Dickens's well-known definition of such a ceremony as 'a masquerade dipped in ink.' He had just come from having a 'deep drink' with his comrades after an interment at the _Begrabnissplatze_, or grand cemetery, outside the Ulricus Bastion, for in their ways these fellows are precisely like the human carrion crows we may see daily perched on the top of London hearses returning from Kensal Green, Brompton, or elsewhere, in a state of hat-band, jollity, and gin. He also bowed low and leeringly to Sir Redmond Sleath. This was not the first of the baronet's acquaintance with these people. He had been aided by the Frau Wyburg in more than one nefarious intrigue, the victim of which had dropped out of society, and by her husband in more than one shady gambling transaction in a 'hell' of the Adolphus Platze, ere he succeeded to the title his father's shady politics had won; so the trio knew each other thoroughly. Ellinor, conceiving that she must be safer in the care of one of her own sex than on board the yacht, agreed to remain with Frau Wyburg till she proceeded to London or Brussels, and from that moment found herself more than ever a hopeless prisoner. The frau was a pale, little woman, with black hair, wicked dark eyes, a square and resolute-looking jaw, a cruel mouth, and a face generally on which, after a time, Ellinor could not look without a shudder when the woman's real character became known to her; but as yet she was disposed to cling to her as a friend--a protector--in her helplessness and excessive debility after all she had undergone, and she gratefully accepted at her hands a cup of hot coffee in her cosy parlour, with its gay chintz curtains and polished oak floor, while her husband, with an eye to monetary business, drew Sir Redmond aside to another apartment. CHAPTER X. THE HOUSE BY THE FLEETHEN.