"See you that cottage down there in the little glade below us?" he said to the page, a little after sunrise. "There live an old woman and two louts, her sons. They are poor creatures, but they make wine good enough to sell; at least, a month or so ago, when I and a half-dozen of my comrades stopped at their cottage to eat and rest, that is what they told me they did with it. We found their wine good to drink,—which can not be said of all wine that is good enough to sell,—and we drank many a full horn of it, and what we did not drink we poured over her floor, so that her house should smell of good cheer." "That was a wasteful thing to do," said the page, "and must have cost you a goodly sum." "Cost us!" laughed the robber. "How could it cost us anything when we had no money? And now, look you, we have more time than we shall know what to do with, and I am going down there for some wine to cheer us through the day. Ride you slowly on, and I will overtake you before you have gone half a mile." So saying, the robber turned from the road, and dashed down into the glade. Reaching the cottage, he tied his horse by the door, and, entering, demanded of the old woman, who was cooking something over a little fire, that she should bring him some of her good wine, and plenty of it, too, for he wanted some to drink and some to carry away. The old woman looked at him for a moment, and then went out and brought a jug of wine and a drinking-horn. When the robber had sat down on a rough stool, and had begun to drink, she went out for some wood for her fire. But instead of picking up dry sticks, she ran to a small field where her sons were working. "Come quickly!" she said. "One of the cowardly thieves who drank and wasted our wine, a while ago, and struck me in the face when I asked for pay, is in the cottage now, drinking and robbing us again. There were many of them then, and you could do nothing. Now there is only one. Come quickly!" [Illustration: THE ROBBER IN THE OLD WOMAN'S COTTAGE.] Without a word, the young men, still carrying the heavy hoes they had been using, ran to the house, and rushing into the room where the robber was still seated on his stool, engaged in drinking his second horn of wine, they attacked him with their hoes.