He let me fairly drag him a few steps. Then suddenly he seemed to awake as from a dream, and with his old voice and old manner said to me: "How the devil did you come by this? Off with it!" and he flung down violently the pack from my shoulders. "I have carried it the whole way," I murmured. "Shameful!" he muttered; "shameful! But it all comes from---- My poor boy! my poor boy!" The effect of the spirits he had drunk, to deaden as far as possible his feelings of shame, had entirely passed away. He was again all that he could be at his best moments, and at once my old love for him returned. My heart began to throb with emotion. I was again ready to give my life for him. "Let us make haste," I said, seizing his cold hand. "It is high time, by heaven!" "They will not venture any further up here," he replied, "even if they have a guide. One man cannot guide them all. But there is treachery at work. Did you not say something of the sort to me?" "Yes; and the traitors are Pinnow and Jock Swart." "Jock was the very one that advised this route." "Exactly." "And the villain was the first one to make off." "He was in haste to join his new friends." We thus spoke in short detached sentences, while we hurried almost at a run over the open space, where the darkness, which was now intense, offered the only security--but an ample one, it is true--against pursuit. A light rain began to fall; we literally could hardly see our hands before our faces. Nothing was to be seen or heard of our pursuers. "The blundering dolts came too late," said Herr von Zehren; "they clearly planned to catch us on the narrow path. If our rascals had not run off, we might now go on comfortably." "We cannot go back to Zehrendorf," I said. "Why not?" "If Jock Swart has betrayed us, as I would take my oath he has, they will certainly search Zehrendorf." "Let them try it once," cried the Wild Zehren; "I will send them home with broken heads. No, no; they will not venture that, or they would have tried it long ago. At Zehrendorf we are as safe as in Abraham's bosom." Just as he said these words there was a sudden gleam of light in the distance ahead of us, like a faint flash of lightning. Before I could frame any conjecture as to its cause, it flashed out once more, this time more vividly, and not vanishing again. The light increased every moment, rising higher and higher against the black sky with a steadily widening glare. "Trantowitz is on fire!" cried Herr von Zehren. It was not Trantowitz; it could not be Trantowitz, that lay further to the left and much lower. At Trantowitz there were not the lofty trees whose summits I could now distinguish in the glow which burned now red and now yellow, but ever brighter and brighter. "By heaven it is my own house!" said Herr von Zehren, He rushed forward for a few paces, and then stopping, burst into a loud laugh. It was a hideous mirth.