"Can anything be done?" asked the driver. The other shrugged his shoulders: "No, it's all up with him," he said. Sickel looked across at the Turk. "Poor old fellow!" he muttered to himself. Then he made them carry him up to the bay's head, and gently took hold of the tuft of hair on his forehead, caressing him. Turk raised himself with difficulty, and rubbed his nose against his driver's leg. Then the bombardier turned himself impatiently on to the other side, and cried to the stretcher-bearers to make haste. "Now get me away quickly!" Turk gazed after the stretcher with his large, mournful eyes, and as it disappeared behind the edge of the declivity he snorted piteously. Soon after the hollow was just as peaceful and deserted as it had been early that morning, with blackbirds building their nests in the wild luxuriance of the beech-trees. But the grass and the bushes were trampled down everywhere; the spot looked like the scene of a fight, and in the middle of the battle-field lay the carcase of poor Turk. Late that evening some soldiers came with lifting apparatus and took the ponderous dead beast to the nearest knacker's yard. When Vogt and the stretcher-bearers had climbed to the top of the hill and saw the building to which the doctor had directed them, they stopped short. Dr. Rademacher had spoken of a manor-house or farm; but what they saw before them looked more like a castle. However, as there was not another roof to be seen near or far, they could not be making any mistake. The stretcher-bearers looked through a gate surmounted by a count's coronet, and saw the front door of the building. Not a sign of life was anywhere visible. Vogt pulled the bell; but a considerable time elapsed before there was any movement on the other side of the grating. Just as he was about to ring a second time, a white-haired old woman appeared on the threshold of the door at the top of the front steps. She was dressed like any other old peasant woman of the neighbourhood. She walked slowly to the gate along the paved pathway, a bunch of keys in her hand. One of the soldiers addressed her: "Tell us, please, can you give this man here a bed, and let us have one for another as well? They have both met with an accident, and for the present cannot be moved any further." The old woman looked at the unconscious corpse-like form on the stretcher for a time without speaking, then said, in a tranquil voice: "Oh, yes, there is room enough here." She unlocked the gate, and let Vogt and the stretcher-bearers in. "Where is the other?" she then asked; and the soldier answered: "He will soon follow."