Slowly the hours went by. When it began to draw towards dusk, the storm increased in bitterness, and in the light of sunset the snow whirled over the desolate snow-plain. Deathly yellow Cossack faces raised themselves spying above the bushes, and long in the blast sounded the roving plunderers’ “Oohaho! Oohaho! Oohaho!” Then Feuerhausen stepped out of the stable, where he had sat between the horses so as not to get frost in his wounds from the ropes with which he had been bound. He went forward to the barred doors of the dwelling-house. “Your Majesty!” he stammered, “the Cossacks are gathering more and more, and darkness is coming soon. I and the ensign can both sit on one horse. If we delay here, this night will be Your Mightiest Majesty’s last, which Gott in His secret dispensation forbit!” The king answered from within, “It must be as we said. Three men do not ride comfortably on two horses.” The Holsteiner shook his head and went down to the ensign. “Such is His Majesty, you damt Swedes. From the stable I heard him walk and walk back and forvart. Sickness and conscience-torture will come. Like a _pater familiæ_ the Muscovite czar stands among his subjects. A sugar-baker he sets up as his friend and a little serving-boy he raises on his glorious imperial throne. Detestable are his gestures when he gets drunk, and he treats women _à la françois_; but his first and last word always runs: ‘For Russia’s good!’ King Carolus leafs his lands as smoking ash-heaps and does not possess a single frient, not efen among his nearest. King Carolus is more lonely than the meanest wagon-drifer. He has not once a comrade’s knee to weep on. Among nobles and fine ladies and perukes he comes like a spectre out of a thousand-year mausoleum--and spectres mostly go about without company. Is he a man of state? Oh, have mercy! No sense for the public. Is he a general? Good-bye? No sense for the big masses. Only to make bridges and set up gabions, clap his hands at captured flags and a couple of kettle-drums. No sense for state and army, only for men.” “That may be also a sense,” replied the ensign. He walked vigorously back and forward, for his fingers were already so stiff with cold that he scarcely could hold his drawn blade. The Holsteiner shifted the ragged coat-collar around his cheeks and went on with muffled voice and eager gestures: “King Carolus laughs with delight when the bridge breaks and men and beasts are miserably drownt. No heart in his breast. To the deuce wit him! King Carolus is such a little Swedish half-genius as wanders out in the worlt and beats the drum and parades and makes a fiasco, and the parterre whistles Whee!” “And that is just why the Swedes go to death for him,” answered the ensign, “that is just why.” “Not angry, my dearest fellow. Your teeth shone so in a laugh when we first met.” “I like to hear the Herr Major talk, but I’m freezing. Will not the major go up and listen at the king’s door?”