Something was hanging to the end of the stick. Kurz in his vehemence had thrust the point through something that had remained on the stick when he threw it away. Hawermann was about to knock it off, when on looking more closely at it he remained motionless with surprise. Bräsig meanwhile was too much occupied with Kurz to be able to attend to what his old friend was doing, so he now called out: "Come along, Charles. We can do nothing more here." Not getting an answer, he turned round to see what was the matter, and perceived Hawermann standing still, turning something black round and round in his hand and staring at it blankly. "Bless me, Charles, what's the matter?" asked Bräsig going towards him.--At length with a mighty effort and in a low tremulous voice, he said: "The pocket-book! The pocket-book! This is the pocket-book!" and he held out to Bräsig a piece of black waxcloth.--"Why? What pocket-book do you mean?"--"I had it in my hand once before. I've seen it for years in my sleeping and waking dreams! Look, there are the Rambow arms. And there's where the clasp was! It was folded so, and was as large as that. That's how it was folded when the three hundred pounds were in it. This is the pocket-book that Regel was to have taken to Rostock." The words fell from him interruptedly and with infinite difficulty as though he were speaking in a trance, and he looked so overcome by his surprise and excitement, that Bräsig sprang to him, and supported him in his arms. The old man clung to the bit of waxcloth as though it were his dearest possession, and would hardly allow Bräsig to look at it closely.--Kurz now came up to them. He had been too much engrossed with his own wrongs to pay any attention to what his companions were doing, and he now exclaimed: "Isn't this enough to drive one mad? My thirty shillings worth of manure is lying on Wredow the baker's field instead of on my own."--"Hang it!" cried Bräsig. "Do have done with your moans about the manure. When once you begin to talk, it's a never ceasing stream. There now, take your stick and let's go home. Come, Charles, don't take on so!"--After Hawermann had gone a few steps the colour returned to his face, and he suddenly became possessed of a restless uneasy longing to get on quickly, and a desire to ask questions. He asked Kurz from whom he had bought the manure; where the carts were loaded; what sort of man Krüger, the butcher, was; and then he again stood still, folded the pocket-book and examined the tear in the waxcloth and the seal, till Kurz forgetting his anger stared at him, lost in wonder that he should feel so little sympathy with him in his unlucky farming transaction. At last Bräsig had to explain what had happened to Kurz, at the same time adjuring him by all he held sacred to keep his knowledge of the matter to himself, "for," he said in conclusion, "you are one of those people whose tongue runs away with them."--The three then stood together on the high road