"Your conscience," said the magistrate. "Well, of course you can best judge of that yourself. Only consider the matter. You have a few hours still. If you dare venture, let your carriage wait in the street behind the house, about one o'clock, a few hundred feet away from the court-yard gate. I shall be enjoying the fresh air at an open window at that time. If I see you below, I will open the gate to you at the stroke of the clock. Good-night, or _au revoir!_" He started to go, but a motion of the count detained him. "Only one question. Trachtenberg told his daughter he would reject even a formal proposal from me--is that true?" "Do I ever lie?" asked Herr von Wroblewski, angrily and yet smiling at the same time. "Do you think I am so stupid as to tell a lie which could be disproven by your asking his daughter one question? You do not know me yet, my dear count!" "Does his fanaticism carry him so far?" "You are surely not surprised at that. Those people barely consider us human beings, and if your conscience cannot accommodate itself-- But that is your own business." He bowed and left. CHAPTER VI. Four weeks had passed away. It was a dull, dirty November day. The gray snow-clouds were lowering, and now and then the lazy flakes fell, turning to water in the air and to mud on the ground. Between the slippery ploughed land and the low strata of clouds, the mists lay thick and motionless. The mild west wind that blew at times in the upper regions of the atmosphere did not reach them, and there they lay, as if wedged in, the gray ocean of vapor absorbing every tone and color. Even the sharpest eye could see but a few steps in advance. The heath was quite deserted. A man who came from the west, driving towards the town in a light wagonette, met no one of whom he could ask the way. The wagonette was empty, and the fiery steeds, when he slackened the reins, galloped along at such a pace that the mud flew up in waves; yet the driver urged them along in the gray twilight. It was now nearly midday, but no lighter than when he started in the early morning. "Drive on, Fedko; it is a case of life and death," the butler had said when he was told to go, and indeed he knew it himself. So again he allowed the reins to slacken, when suddenly the carriage stood still. The horses reared, but in vain. The tough bog in which they had sunk to the knees held them fast. The man jumped out, but he, too, stuck fast; they must have driven on the ploughed land at the turn of the road. There he stood helpless--what was he to do--where was he to turn? "_Jesu, Marie!_" he cried, "perhaps in the meantime she will die!" Suddenly he heard a distant sound. He listened. It was the bell from the tower of the Dominican convent chiming the hour of noon.