The voices sank again, and presently I heard the outer door creak. They had left the forge; I stepped to the open window and saw them go to the little shed close to the beach, by which Pinnow's boat was usually drawn up on the sand. They disappeared in the shadow of the shed; then I heard a chain rattle, and a grating on the sand; they were launching the boat. All was then still: the only sounds audible were the stronger roaring of the sea, mingled with the rush of the wind in the leaves of the old oak, which threw its half-decayed boughs over the forge. I heard a rustling in the room, and turned quickly round. It was Christel; she stood behind me, looking with an intense gaze, as I had just done, through the window into the darkness. "Well, Christel!" I said. She placed her finger on her lips, and whispered, "Hush!" then beckoned me from the window. Surprised rather than alarmed, I followed her. "What is the matter, Christel?" "Don't go with them, whatever you do. And go away from here at once. You cannot stay here." "But, Christel, why not? And who is the gentleman?" "I must not tell you; I must not speak his name. If you go with them, you will learn it soon enough; but do not go!" "Why? What will they do to me, Christel?" "Do? They will do nothing to you. But do not go with them." A noise was heard outside; Christel turned away and began clearing the table, while the voices of the two who were returning from the beach came nearer and nearer. I do not know what another would have done in my place; I can only say that the girl's warning produced upon me an effect precisely opposite to that intended. True, I well remember that my heart beat quicker, and that I cast a hurried glance at the four double-barrels and the long fowling-piece that hung in the old places on the wall; but the desire to go through with the adventure was now fully awaked in me. I felt equal to any danger that might beset me; and, for the matter of that, Christel had just said that no harm was intended to me. Besides--and this circumstance is, perhaps, the real key to my conduct that evening--the stranger, whoever he might be, with his partly serious and partly jocose, half-sympathetic and half-mocking language, had somehow established a mysterious influence over me. In later years, when I heard the legend of the Piper of Hameln, whom the children were irresistibly compelled to follow, I at once recalled this night and the stranger. He now appeared at the door, dressed in a coarse, wide sailor's jacket, and wearing a low-crowned tarpaulin hat in place of his cloth cap. Pinnow opened a press in the wall, and produced a similar outfit for me, which the stranger made me put on. "It is turning cold," he remarked, "and your present dress will be but little protection to you, though I trust our passage will be a short one. So: now you are equipped capitally: now let us be off."