“Yes, a week later, and with the same gendarme. The cobbler in the village, who sat all day long pegging at his shoes, and who, it seemed, was watch-goose for the whole village and knew the movements of every inhabitant, man, woman, and child, and who for some reason hated Fiddles, on being interviewed by the gendarme, had stated positively that the Mayor had _not_ passed his corner with his gun and four dogs on the day of Fiddles’s arrest. This being the case, the gendarme had rearrested the culprit, and would have taken him at once to the lock-up had not Fiddles threatened the officer with false arrest. Would the Herr Painter accompany the officer and himself to the house of the Mayor and settle the matter as to whether his Honor was or was not out hunting on that particular morning? “All this time Fiddles was looking about the dining-room of the inn, taking in the supper-table, the rows of mugs, especially the landlady, who was frightened half out of her wits by Cocked Hat’s presence, and more especially still little Gretchen--such a plump, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Dutch girl--with two Marguerite pig-tails down her back. (Gretchen served the beer, and was the life of the place. ‘Poor young man!’ she said to the landlady, who had by this time come to the same conclusion--‘and he is so good-looking and with such lovely eyes.’) “When we got to the Mayor’s the old fellow was asleep in a big armchair, his pipe out, his legs far apart--a keg-shaped kind of a man, with a head flattened on his shoulders like a stove-lid, who said ‘Ach Gott’ every five minutes, and spluttered when he talked. “I went in first, leaving the two on the porch until I should send for them. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out and had become a little anxious. I had run up from Munich for a few weeks’ outdoor work and wanted to stay out, not behind iron bars for abetting crime.