The young boatman who had rowed them over flatly refused to start on the return trip, in view of the storm that threatened to break upon them at any moment. The boat was too heavily loaded to get over the water quickly, and his master had given him a bad pair of oars, the good ones having been sent off with another boat early in the morning. The gentlemen might offer him what they liked, but he would not make the trip; he knew what he was saying, and what it meant "when the lake and the sky came so near together." One of the young gentlemen was addressing the lad--who was a neatly-dressed young fellow, and wished, perhaps, to spare his Sunday clothes--in rough and imperious tones, commanding him to obey without further parley, and to leave the responsibility to them. The lake was as smooth as a mirror, and there was so little wind that the storm might very likely be an hour in reaching them. But when, upon the boatman's remaining obstinate, he tried to wrench the oar from the defiant fellow's hand, saying that, if a lout like him had no pluck, he might at least get out of the way and take himself to the devil--all the man's pent-up fury and insulted _amour propre_ burst out; with an angry answer in the most forcible epithets of his country dialect, he threw the oar at the young count's feet, took his jacket out of the boat, and, with a malicious grin, wishing the company a pleasant journey, started off toward the highway which winds along by the lake-shore. "The thunder-storm comes just right for him," said the waiter-girl, who had been attracted to the spot by the quarrel, and who now stood gazing after the angry fellow as he hurried away. "The ladies and gentlemen mustn't think that Hiesl had started to run back to his father's on foot; he knew well enough there was going to be a wedding celebrated in Ambach, and had been impatient to get there for some time; for the red-haired waiter-girl in the tavern there had completely turned his head, and all because she wouldn't have anything to do with him--though he would marry her on the spot if she would take him, and he was not one to be sneezed at either, and was earning a good living too. So he had caught at the pretext that the storm would be upon them before the party could get back to Starnberg again, and was on his way as fast as his legs would carry him, so as to get to Ambach, which was nearly an hour from here, with a dry skin. Oh! these men!" She seemed to think it very foolish for him to run so far, when he could find all he wanted close at hand. But in reply to their question, whether there really was so much danger of the storm, she gave the most comforting assurances; it might not reach them for several hours yet, and, very likely, if a wind should spring up it would pass over altogether.