It was a weird enough and uncanny situation, after the glow of excitement began to wane, as I squatted in silence with my fellows on the damp chill earth, peering into the dark, and straining my ears for those first sounds which would betoken the assassins. The night was not absolutely black. Heavy banks of clouds moved across the moon, which occasionally peered out with a yellow half-orb, and sent a flying gleam of light across the garden wall. Again the shadows would become so black as to be almost impenetrable. The wind had shifted to the north and sang down the Rhine valley damp and chill, making me glad I had drawn an extra doublet over my ring shirt; and even then betwixt mingled cold and excitement I found my teeth a-chatter. Tall and dark above us loomed the lofty roofs and the dim outlines of the sombre chimneys. Once or twice I heard a clattering of the storks far up upon the eaves. We waited in cold, impatience, and discomfort, a time that seemed interminable. Presently the minster clock boomed “one,” and I heard the city watchman go clattering down the street with his staff and lantern, chanting his “Cover your fires and bar your doors,” as if any honest man would be awake at that hour to hear him. Other life there seemed nowhere, save in Dr. Luther’s apartment, where a rushlight and candles still burned, and where once or twice across the open lattice I saw his figure pass. I was beginning to misdoubt the whole business, and to tell myself that it was folly to imagine that even Italians would be mad enough to outrage the German nation by trying to murder its hero on the eve of his crisis day. I was edging over to Andrea to seek again for his story, and to pin him down to some proof that we were waiting for anything more perilous than a fine ague, when Adolf--whose wise old ears were like a lynx’s--gave a low “hist!” Instantly I _knew_, rather than heard, that some one was moving down the alley behind us. We clinched our weapons, while I felt--thanks to my quickened heart beats--that every sense of cold had vanished. We heard feet approaching stealthily, I soon judged of a party of about five men. The strangers were conversing in whispers, but it was long ere we caught a word. Right past us, with only the thin brick garden wall between, they went quietly as cats, but quite audibly. They actually passed beyond the house of the Knights, and I was thinking they were not our expected guests, when a warning word from one of the party halted the rest. “Turn around,” commanded a muffled voice, “you have gone beyond the house.” “You are sure it is this one?” asked another, in accents betraying a very poor command of German. “Quite sure. I went down the alley three times to-day. I remember the chimneys. Dr. Luther’s chambers are on the first floor, directly against the garden.”