and preferred remaining quiet to having forced upon him the necessity of making false statements.  As to his followers, there was no fear of the people among whom they mixed detecting that they were English.  To the Bavarian inhabitants, all languages, save their native German, were alike unintelligible; and even had French been commonly spoken, the dialects of that tongue, such as would naturally be spoken by archers and men-at-arms, would have been a Greek to those accustomed only to Norman French.

Upon the third day, however, an incident occurred which upset Cuthbert’s calculations, and nearly involved the whole party in ruin.  The town was, as the young baron had said, governed by a noble who was a near relation of Conrad of Montferat, and who was the bitter enemy of the English.  A great fete had been given in honor of the marriage of his daughter, and upon this day the young pair were to ride in triumph through the city.  Great preparations had been made; masks and pageants of various kinds manufactured; and the whole townspeople, dressed in their holiday attire, were gathered in the streets.  Cuthbert had gone out, followed by his little band of retainers, and taken their station to see the passing show.  First came a large body of knights and men-at-arms, with gay banners and trappings.  Then rode the bridegroom, with the bride carried in a litter by his side.  After this came several allegorical representations.  Among these was the figure of a knight bearing the arms of Austria.  Underneath his feet, on the car, lay a figure clad in a royal robe, across whom was thrown a banner with the leopards of England.  The knight stood with his foot on this figure.

This representation of the dishonor of England at the hands of Austria elicited great acclamations from the crowd.  Cuthbert clinched his teeth and grasped his sword angrily, but had the sense to see the folly of taking any notice of the insult.  Not so with Cnut.  Furious it the insult offered to the standard of his royal master, Cnut, with a bound, burst through the ranks of the crowd, leaped on to the car, and with a buffet smote the figure representing Austria into the road, and lifted the flag of England from the ground.  A yell of indignation and rage was heard.  The infuriated crowd rushed forward.  Cnut, with a bound, sprang from the car, and, joining his comrades, burst through those who attempted to impede them, and darted down a by-street.

Cuthbert, for the moment amazed at the action of his follower, had on the instant drawn his sword and joined the archers.  In the crowd, however, he was for a second separated from them; and before he could tear himself from the hands of the citizens who had seized him, the men-at-arms accompanying the procession surrounded him, and he was led away by them to the castle, the guards with difficulty protecting him from the enraged populace.  Even at this moment Cuthbert experienced a deep sense of satisfaction