And now he came out of his room, if not the wildest of all wild warriors, yet in appearance one who would be very appropriately selected for an adventure that demanded a strong and bold man. His long legs were incased in immense boots; over a close-fitting jacket of silk he had put on a loose woollen overcoat, which he probably wore when hunting in winter, and which could be drawn close with a belt or allowed to hang loose, as at present, he having buckled the belt under it around the jacket, and thrust his pistols into the belt. With a jolly laugh he displayed his equipment and asked me if I would not have an overcoat also, as he had another; an offer which I gladly accepted. "We look like two brothers," said Hans; and in fact we might easily have been mistaken for brothers, as we both had the same stature and breadth of shoulders, and were dressed almost precisely alike. "If there are not too many of them," said Hans, "we can easily manage them." "A half-dozen to each of us, or so," I said, and laughed; but I was very far from a mirthful feeling as we closed the door after us, and Caro, whom we had left behind, broke out into a dismal howling and whining. Poor Caro, he was in the right that morning when he reminded me with his woebegone looks that we should never praise the day until the evening. CHAPTER XVII. It was four o'clock when we set out, and already it was growing dusk as we took the foot-path through the stubble-field to Zehrendorf. No clear judgment of the weather was to be drawn from the appearance of the sky and clouds, as the whole atmosphere was filled with watery mist, through which every object took a singularly strange and unnatural appearance. We pushed on rapidly, sometimes side by side and sometimes in single file, for the path was narrow and very slippery from the incessant rains. We were just deliberating what we should say to Constance, in case we should unfortunately meet her, when we saw upon the road bordered with willows, which was but a few hundred paces distant from the foot-path, a carriage drawn by two horses coming from the castle in such haste that in less than half a minute it had vanished in the mist, and we could only hear the trampling of the galloping horses and the rattling of the carriage over the broken causeway. Hans and I looked at each other in astonishment. "Who can that be?" he asked. "It is the steuerrath," I answered. "What can bring him here?" he asked again. I did not answer. I could not tell Hans of the letter that proved the direct or indirect complicity of the steuerrath, nor explain how likely it was that he would attempt to warn his brother that the affair had taken a wrong turn. What information could he have brought? Might it still be of service to the unfortunate man whose movements were dogged by treachery?