After five or six days we allowed ourselves to fall into a state of unwatchfulness.  One warm evening we dismissed our squires for an hour’s recreation.  The Cologne River flows by the north side of the inn garden, and, the spot being secluded, Max and I, after dark, cooled ourselves by a plunge in the water.  We had come from the water and finished dressing, save for our doublets, which lay upon the sod, when two men approached whom we thought to be our squires.  When first we saw them, they were in the deep shadow of the trees that grew near the water’s edge, and we did not notice their halberds until they were upon us.  When the men had approached within four yards, we heard a noise back of us and turning saw four soldiers, each bearing an arquebuse pointed in our direction.  At the same moment another man stepped from behind the two we had first seen and came quickly to me.  He was Count Calli.  In his left hand he held a parchment.  Max and I were surrounded and unarmed.

“I arrest you on the order of His Grace, the duke,” said Calli, in low tones, speaking French with an Italian accent.

“Your authority?” I demanded.

“This,” he said, offering me the parchment, “and this,” touching his sword.  I took the parchment but could not read it in the dark.

“I’ll go to the inn to read your warrant,” I said, stooping to take up my doublet.

“You will do nothing of the sort,” he answered.  “One word more from you, and there will be no need to arrest you.  I shall be only too glad to dispense with that duty.”

I felt sure he wished us to resist that he might have a pretext for murdering us.  I could see that slow-going Max was making ready for a fight, even at the odds of seven to two, and to avert trouble I spoke softly in German:—­

“These men are eager to kill us.  Our only hope lies in submission.”

While I was speaking the men gathered closely about us, and almost before my words were uttered, our wrists were manacled behind us and we were blindfolded.  Our captors at once led us away.  A man on either side of me held my arms, and by way of warning I received now and then a merciless prod between my shoulder-blades from a halberd in the hands of an enthusiastic soul that walked behind me.  Max, I supposed, was receiving like treatment.

After a hundred paces or more we waded the river, and then I knew nothing of our whereabouts.  Within a half-hour we crossed a bridge which I supposed was the one over the moat at the Postern.  There we halted, and the password was given in a whisper.  Then came the clanking of chains and creaking of hinges, and I knew the gates were opening and the portcullis rising.  After the gates were opened I was again urged forward by the men on either side of me and the enterprising soul in the rear.