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“Yes, a week later, and with the same gendarme. The cobbler in the village, who sat all day long pegging at his shoes, and who, it seemed, was watch-goose for the whole village and knew the movements of every inhabitant, man, woman, and child, and who for some reason hated Fiddles, on being interviewed by the gendarme, had stated positively that the Mayor had not passed his corner with his gun and four dogs on the day of Fiddles’s arrest. This being the case, the gendarme had rearrested the culprit, and would have taken him at once to the lock-up had not Fiddles threatened the officer with false arrest. Would the Herr Painter accompany the officer and himself to the house of the Mayor and settle the matter as to whether his Honor was or was not out hunting on that particular morning?

“All this time Fiddles was looking about the dining-room of the inn, taking in the supper-table, the rows of mugs, especially the landlady, who was frightened half out of her wits by Cocked Hat’s presence, and more especially still little Gretchen–such a plump, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little Dutch girl–with two Marguerite pig-tails down her back. (Gretchen served the beer, and was the life of the place. ‘Poor young man!’ she said to the landlady, who had by this time come to the same conclusion–‘and he is so good-looking and with such lovely eyes.’)

“When we got to the Mayor’s the old fellow was asleep in a big armchair, his pipe out, his legs far apart–a keg-shaped kind of a man, with a head flattened on his shoulders like a stove-lid, who said ‘Ach Gott’ every five minutes, and spluttered when he talked.

“I went in first, leaving the two on the porch until I should send for them. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out and had become a little anxious. I had run up from Munich for a few weeks’ outdoor work and wanted to stay out, not behind iron bars for abetting crime.

“‘Your Supreme Highness,’ I began, ‘I have heard of your great prowess as a sportsman, and so I wanted to pay my respects. I, too, am a shootist–an American shootist.’ Here I launched out on our big game (I had been six months in the Rockies before I came abroad, and knew what I was talking about). He was wide awake by this time and was listening. Dropping into the chair which he had drawn up for me, I told him of our elk–‘As big as horses, your Honor’; of our mountain lions–savage beasts that could climb trees and fall upon the defenseless; of our catamounts, deer, wolves, bears, foxes–all these we killed without molestation from anybody; I told him how all American sportsmen were like the Nimrods of old. How galling, then, for a true shootist to be misunderstood, decried, denounced, and arrested for so insignificant a beastie as a rabbit! This indignity my very dear friend, Herr Wilhelm Fuedels-Shimmer, had suffered–a most estimable young man–careless, perhaps, in his interpretation of the law, but who would not be–that is, what sportsman would not be? I had in Wilhelm’s defense not only backed up his story, but I had gone so far as to hazard the opinion to the officer of that law, that it was not on some uncertain Tuesday or Friday or Saturday, but on that very Wednesday, that his Supreme Highness had been wont to follow with his four accomplished dogs the tracks of the nimble cotton-tail. Would his Highness, therefore, be good enough to concentrate his giant brain on his past life and fish from out his memory the exact day on which he last hunted? While that was going on I would excuse myself long enough to bring in the alleged criminal.

“Fiddles stepped in with the easy grace of a courtier accustomed to meeting a Mayor every day of his life, and, after a confirmatory wink from me, boldly asserted that he had followed behind his Honor–had really assisted in driving the game his way. His Honor might not remember his face, but he surely must remember that his Honorable Honor had extraordinarily good luck that day. The rabbit in controversy–a very small, quite a baby rabbit–was really one his Honorable and Most Supreme Highness had himself wounded, and which he, Fiddles, had finished. He was bringing it to his Honor when the estimable gendarme had stopped him.