The ringleader, Giacomo Bianchi, from Bologna, was asserting that "the
old bear"--he meant Appenzelder--"would never permit the incomplete choir
to sing before the Emperor and his royal sister."

"So we shall have the afternoon," he exclaimed. "The grooms will give me
a horse, and after dinner I, and whoever cares to go with me, will ride
back to the village where we last stopped. What do I want there? I'll
get the kiss which the tavernkeeper's charming little daughter owes me.
Her sweet mouth and fair braids with the bows of blue ribbon--I saw
nothing prettier anywhere!"

"Yes, these blondes!" cried Angelo Negri, a Neapolitan boy of thirteen,
rolling his black eyes upward enthusiastically, and kissing, for lack of
warm lips, the empty air.

"Sweet, sweet, sweet," sighed Giacoma Bianchi.

"Sweet enough," remarked little thick-set Cornelius Groen from Breda, in
broken Italian. "Yet you surely are not thinking of that silly girl,
with her flaxen braids, but of the nice honey and the light white pastry
she brought us. If we can get that again, I'll ride there with you."

"I won't," protested Wilhelm Haldema, from Leuwarden in Friesland.
"I shall go down to the river with my pole. It's swarming with fish."

Wolf had remained concealed until this moment. Now he entered the huge
apartment.

The boys rushed toward him with joyous ease, and, as they crowded around