The good Hans! he had meant all for the best--even his plan of smashing the skull of our happy rival. How could he help it if on this occasion, as so often before--always in his life indeed--he rode a slow horse? He could not founder the animal in a cause which really did not concern it in the least. About eight o'clock, while he was sitting in his room, he saw the light of the fire, and saddled Wodan and hurried to it, followed by all his wagons. Men came over with wagons and fire-engines from the other estates; but it was not possible to save anything; old Pahlen, who no doubt had no difficulty in eluding the vigilance of the stupid stable-boy, had done the work too well--the flames burst from all parts of the building at once. "I rode home," he went on, "and went to bed, and waked up this morning. I don't know why, I had much rather never have awaked again." Poor Hans! This morning, for the first time, he had learned from his men what had happened; how the night before, the officers of the customs, with the assistance of half a company of soldiers, had hunted down the smugglers; and that they had caught four or five, who would all be hung. And a soldier had sunk in the morass, one of the custom-house men had been wounded, and Jock Swart shot dead. Herr von Zehren had been found dead this morning at the ruin. That it was a lucky thing for him not to have lived to learn that his daughter had run away, and that the old Pahlen, whom the stable-boy Fritz and Christian Halterman had caught in the act, had set fire to his castle and burned it to the ground. And they would have hanged him, just as they meant to hang George Hartwig, the son of customs-accountant Hartwig at Uselin, who had been the captain of the smugglers, as soon as they caught him. Hans filled my glass again, and invited me by an expressive look to empty it at once, as if so I could best afford him the consolatory assurance that they had not hanged me so far. Now it was my turn to relate. Hans listened, silently smoking; but when I described the death of the Wild Zehren, and how I had last seen him--dead, with his pale face turned to the rising sun, the first beams of which fell in his glazed eyes--he sighed deeply, rocked his great head from side to side, and drank deep draughts of wine. "And now, what do you advise me to do?" I said, at last. "What is your own idea?" asked Hans. That my position was a most serious one, even Hans perceived. I had forced Pinnow, pistol in hand, to take me with him; I had taken the most direct and most active part in the expedition; I had fired upon the officers; I had accompanied Herr von Zehren in his desperate flight. In the eyes of the law these were far from being meritorious performances; and the less I came into contact with the law henceforth, the better it would be for me.