When the artist’s head appeared in the opening, the priest paused, for Moor paid the travelling expenses; but when his companion Sutor drew his cloak around him with every token of discomfort and annoyance, he followed his example in a still more conspicuous way.

The artist paid no heed to these gestures, but quietly requested his guests to make room for the boy.

A muffled head was suddenly thrust out from under the straw, a voice cried:  “A hospital on wheels!” then the head vanished again like that of a fish, which has risen to take a breath of air.

“Very true,” replied the artist.  “You need not draw up your limbs so far, my worthy Lansquenet, but I must request these reverend gentlemen to move a little farther apart, or closer together, and make room for the sick lad on the leather sack.”

While these words were uttered, one of the escort laid the still senseless boy under the tilt.

Magister Sutor noticed the snow that clung to Ulrich’s hair and clothing, and while struggling to rise, uttered a repellent “no,” while Stubenrauch hastily added reproachfully:  “There will be a perfect pool here, when that melts; you gave us these places, Meister Moor, but we hardly expected to receive also dripping limbs and rheumatic pains....”

Before he finished the sentence, the bandaged head again appeared from the straw, and the high, shrill voice of the man concealed under it, asked?  “Was the blood of the wounded wayfarer, the good Samaritan picked up by the roadside, dry or wet?”

An encouraging glance from Sutor requested Stubenrauch to make an appropriate answer, and the latter in an unctuous tone, hastily replied:  “It was the Lord, who caused the Samaritan to find the wounded man by the roadside—­this did not happen in our case, for the wet boy is forced upon us, and though we are Samaritans.....”

“You are not yet merciful,” cried the voice from the straw.

The artist laughed, but the soldier, slapping his thigh with his sound hand, cried: 

“In with the boy, you fellows outside; here, put him on my right—­move farther apart, you gentlemen down below; the water will do us no harm, if you’ll only give us some of the wine in your basket yonder.”

The priests, willy-nilly, now permitted Ulrich to be laid on the leathern sack between them, and while first Sutor, and then Stubenrauch, shrunk away to mutter prayers over a rosary for the senseless lad’s restoration to consciousness, and to avoid coming in contact with his wet clothes, the artist entered the vehicle, and without asking permission, took the wine from the priests’ basket.  The soldier helped him, and soon their united exertions, with the fiery liquor, revived the fainting boy.

Moor rode forward, and the wagon jolted on until the day’s journey ended at Emmendingen.  Count von Hochburg’s retainers, who were to serve as escort from this point, would not ride on Christmas day.  The artist made no objection, but when they also declared that no horse should leave the stable on the morrow, which was a second holiday, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, without any show of anger, but in a firm, haughty tone, that he should then probably be obliged—­if necessary with their master’s assistance,—­to conduct them to Freiburg to-morrow.