An aching blow frightened the frail wood, splintered it around the edge. Wessel opened it a scarce three inches, and held the candle high. His was to play the timorous, the super-respectable citizen, disgracefully disturbed. “One small hour of the night for rest. Is that too much to ask from every brawler and--” “Quiet, gossip! Have you seen a perspiring fellow?” The shadows of two gallants fell in immense wavering outlines over the narrow stairs; by the light Wessel scrutinized them closely. Gentlemen, they were, hastily but richly dressed--one of them wounded severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving aside Wessel’s ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the room and with their swords went through the business of poking carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending their search to Wessel’s bedchamber. “Is he hid here?” demanded the wounded man fiercely. “Is who here?” “Any man but you.” “Only two others that I know of.” For a second Wessel feared that he had been too damned funny, for the gallants made as though to prick him through. “I heard a man on the stairs,” he said hastily, “full five minutes ago, it was. He most certainly failed to come up.” He went on to explain his absorption in “The Faerie Queene” but, for the moment at least, his visitors, like the great saints, were anaesthetic to culture. “What’s been done?” inquired Wessel. “Violence!” said the man with the wounded hand. Wessel noticed that his eyes were quite wild. “My own sister. Oh, Christ in heaven, give us this man!” Wessel winced. “Who is the man?” “God’s word! We know not even that. What’s that trap up there?” he added suddenly. “It’s nailed down. It’s not been used for years.” He thought of the pole in the corner and quailed in his belly, but the utter despair of the two men dulled their astuteness. “It would take a ladder for any one not a tumbler,” said the wounded man listlessly. His companion broke into hysterical laughter. “A tumbler. Oh, a tumbler. Oh--” Wessel stared at them in wonder. “That appeals to my most tragic humor,” cried the man, “that no one--oh, no one--could get up there but a tumbler.” The gallant with the wounded hand snapped his good fingers impatiently. “We must go next door--and then on--” Helplessly they went as two walking under a dark and storm-swept sky. Wessel closed and bolted the door and stood a moment by it, frowning in pity. A low-breathed “Ha!” made him look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of distaste, half of sardonic amusement. “They take off their heads with their helmets,” he remarked in a whisper, “but as for you and me, Wessel, we are two cunning men.” “Now you be cursed,” cried Wessel vehemently. “I knew you for a dog, but when I hear even the half of a tale like this, I know you for such a dirty cur that I am minded to club your skull.”