The small man gnashed his teeth, and the musketeer greedily stretched out his hands for the sack. “One moment!” cried the little man. “Mr. President, that money according to the lord mayor’s proclamation, was to be given to him who took Hans of Iceland.” “Well?” said the judge. The little man turned to the giant: “That man is not Hans of Iceland.” A murmur of surprise ran through the room. The president and private secretary moved uneasily in their chairs. “No!” emphatically reiterated the small man, “the money does not belong to the cursed musketeer of Munkholm, for that man is not Hans of Iceland.” “Halberdiers,” said the president, “remove this madman, he has lost his senses.” The bishop interposed: “Will you allow me, most worthy President, to remark that you may, by refusing to hear this man, destroy the prisoner’s last chance? I demand that he be confronted with the stranger.” “Reverend Bishop, the court will grant your request,” replied the president; and addressing the giant: “You have declared yourself to be Hans of Iceland; do you persist in that statement?” The prisoner answered: “I do; I am Hans of Iceland.” “You hear, Bishop?” The little man shouted in the same breath with the president: “You lie, mountaineer of Kiölen! you lie! Do not persist in bearing a name which must crush you; remember that it has been fatal to you already.” “I am Hans from Klipstadur, in Iceland,” repeated the giant, his eye riveted on the private secretary. The small man approached the Munkholm soldier, who, like the rest of the audience, had watched this scene with eager curiosity. “Mountaineer of Kiölen,” he cried, “they say that Hans of Iceland drinks human blood. If you be he, drink. Here it is.” And scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when, tossing his sealskin mantle over his shoulder, he plunged a dagger into the soldier’s heart, and flung his dead body at the giant’s feet. A cry of fright and horror followed; the soldiers guarding the giant started back. The small man, swift as lightning, rushed upon the defenceless mountaineer, and with another blow of his dagger, laid him upon the first corpse. Then flinging off his cloak, his false hair, and black beard, he revealed his wiry limbs, hideously attired in the skins of wild beasts, and a face which inspired the beholders with even greater horror than did the bloody dagger which he brandished aloft, reeking with a double murder. “Ha! judges, where is Hans of Iceland now?” “Guards, seize that monster!” cried the startled judge. Hans hurled his dagger into the centre of the room. “It is useless to me if there are no more Munkholm soldiers here.” With these words, he yielded unresistingly to the halberdiers and bowmen who surrounded him, prepared to lay siege to him, as to a city. They chained the monster to the prisoner’s bench; and a litter bore away his victims, one of whom, the mountaineer, still breathed.