The little town of Schlestadt went to bed betimes.

By ten o'clock its burghers were in their night-caps.

A belated visitor going home at that hour found his footsteps ring upon the pavement with surprising echoes, and traversed dark street after dark street, seeing in each window, perhaps, a mimic moon, but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse.

In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the lamp in the room.
There were three men in that room booted as for a journey.

Their dress might have misled one into the belief that they were merchants, but their manner of wearing it proclaimed them soldiers.