He laughed, and began to speak with vehemence, sometimes pacing the room, and then stopping before me. "Not the first time. When I was young--it may now be thirty years ago, or more--there stood in their cursed nest, in a waste place between the town wall and the ramparts, an old half-rotten gallows, and on the gallows were nailed two rusty iron plates, upon which there stood half-defaced names, and one of these names was _Malte von Zehren_, with the date 1436. I recognized it by the date; and one night, with the friend of my youth, Hans von Trantow--the father of our Hans--I wrenched it off, cut down the gallows, and pitched it over the rampart into the fosse. Do you know how my ancestor's name came there? He had a feud with the Peppersacks there in the town, and they had sworn, if they caught him, to hang him on the gallows. And though he heard of it, and knew that there would be no mercy for him, he slipped into the town in disguise, during the carnival, for the love of a townsman's pretty daughter. You see, my dear George, the women--they are at the bottom of all mischief. And they caught him too, early next morning, as he was stealing away, flung him into the dungeon, and the next day he was to be hanged, to the delight of all the good townsfolk. But a page who accompanied him, and who had escaped, carried the news to Hans von Trantow, and Hans sent off a score of riders to all cousins and kinsfolk over the whole island, and that night they crossed over in twenty boats, two hundred of them, with Hans at their head, forced their way into the town, broke into the dungeon and rescued my ancestor, the good fellows, and then set the old nest on fire at its four corners and burned it down. So as the townsmen had lost Malte von Zehren, they contented themselves with nailing his name upon the gallows.