"Exactly, Mein Herr--you have met my husband Karl Karsseboom and his dog Jager." "If I meet him again!" thought I, with a hand on my pistol. After this information, and the discovery of who was my landlord (ah! if the fellow had returned when I was asleep!) I resolved to lose no time in endeavouring to reach the ford of the Lahn at any risk. Whoever was there, the night would favour me, and I was alike forewarned and forearmed. I studied closely the features of the country from the cottage window, and repeatedly consulted a little pocket map of the principality of Waldeck, which had been given to me by Gervais Monjoy, two means of topographical knowledge that availed me little, when, a few hours after, without encountering the amiable Karl Karsseboom, I found myself on the rugged German highway alone, bewildered, and floundering along in the dark in my military jack-boots, with a heavy storm of snow drifting in my face, and the stormy and frosty north wind, which was so keen and cold that at times it well-nigh choked me. CHAPTER XIII. LAST OF THE EMERALD RING. The snow-flakes were thick and blinding; the roadway became less and less discernible as the white mantle of winter deepened; buried under it, shrubs, tall weeds, and everything that could mark the borders of the path, a very rough and occasionally steep one, disappeared, and I wandered on wearily and at random without knowing in what direction. There was no one abroad at such an hour and in such a season, and no house was visible, for the district was wild and desolate, having been severely devastated by the French foragers. No sound came to the ear but the occasional hiss of the sharp hail that mingled with the falling snow, rendering the winter blast more chilly, choking, and biting, till the lungs became acutely pained, and the heart throbbed wildly. How far I struggled on inspiring that icy atmosphere I cannot say, but nature was beginning to sink, and in my heart grew the fear of being conquered altogether, and of perishing in the storm, when happily a light that shone down what appeared to be a kind of ravine or trench (I know not which with certainty, as the snow caused all forms and features to blend) filled me with new strength, and manfully I made towards it, keeping in the track or line it cast so brightly towards me. Ere long I could discover other lights that shone high above me in the air; then all at once the outline of a great old schloss or castle loomed through the snowy atmosphere, and the light which had been my guide shone apparently from a window in the lower story of the edifice. This suggested ideas of robbers, for who has not heard or read of German robbers and their haunts in ruined castles of the Black Forest, or by the Rhine and Weser? A French outpost perhaps! Well, it mattered not; anything--even a few of the Volontaires de Clermont were better hosts than the snow and Jack Frost in such a night and in such a season.