"Then I now know that I was right, even though I did let rogues and traitors slink off," continued the horseman. "I stood on guard at the gate of the back court. Sir Drost, and I saw three men in disguise lead their horses out of the stable. They disappeared through the rampart gate close to the ford, and the Lord only knows what became of them. My comrades thought we should have stopped and seized them, for they stole so strangely away, and looked around them on all sides; but I said, 'No! it is a criminal act if we touch them,' and we let them 'scape. The one was assuredly the little German who was forced to give you the keys; the other was a fat fellow, who could hardly waddle away; but the third was a tall stern man; he swore, and laid about him, at every step. I could almost take my oath it was the junker himself. He was hardly twelve paces from me when he caught a sight of me, and shyed off, as it were.--He led his horse over the dunghill, that he might not come too near us, I suppose; but then the hood fell back from his neck, and I saw the long black hair you know of; it is as rough as a horse-tail. No one in the country has such dark unsightly hair as the junker. But, as I say, we let him go, and budged not from the spot.--The king himself will know how to chastise him, thought I." "Good!" exclaimed the Drost; "thou hast behaved as was thy duty--as to the rest, what is between the king and his brother concerns not us, and still less whether the junker's hair be fine or coarse." He then spurred his horse, and proceeded at a brisk trot, without stopping. Ere Drost Aage, with his horsemen, reached Kallundborg, the king approached the town, with the greater part of his chivalry, and a more numerous troop of horsemen and spearmen than he was ever wont to take with him when about to visit his vassals or one of his castles. It was noon. The horses foamed with hard riding. The troop halted at St. George's Hospital, upon the high hill just without the town. CHAP. XIII.