As soon as Wenzel, in the presence of his cousin, the chamberlain, heard an indistinct rumour that a man with two black horses, saved from the flames at the Tronkenburg, had come into the city, they both set off attended by some servants, whom they had hastily gathered together to the castle-yard, where he was, that in case the horses should turn out to be Kohlhaas’s they might pay the expenses and take them home. But how surprised were they when they saw a multitude, which increased every moment, attracted by the spectacle, and assembled about the cart to which the horses were fastened. The people were shouting amid peals of laughter, that the horses which had caused the state to totter had come to the knackers. The squire, who had walked round the cart, and saw with confusion the miserable beasts, who looked every moment as if they longed to die, said that these were not the horses which he had taken from Kohlhaas, when the chamberlain casting upon him a look of speechless rage, which, had he been made of iron, would have crushed him, stepped up to the knacker and asked him, as he flung back his mantle and discovered his chain and order, whether these were the horses which had been in the possession of the shepherd of Wilsdruf, and which Squire Wenzel von Tronka, to whom they belonged, had required. The man, who with a pail in his hand, was watering a stout-bodied horse, that drew his cart, said: “Do you mean the black ones?” Taking the bit out of his horse’s mouth, and setting down the pail he said that the animals tied to the cart had been sold to him by a swineherd of Hainichen, but where he got them, and whether they came from the Wilsdruf shepherd--that he knew nothing about. The messenger of the Wilsdruf court, he said, as he again took up the pail and rested it against the pole of the cart, had told him that he was to bring them to Dresden to the house of the von Tronkas, but the squire to whom he had been directed was called Conrad. After these words he turned round with the remainder of the water, which the horse had left in the pail, and flung it upon the pavement. The chamberlain, who amid the gaze of the scoffing multitude could not get a look from the fellow, who continued his work with the most insensible zeal, told him that he was the Squire Conrad von Tronka, but that the horses he had with him belonged to the squire his cousin, that they had come to the Wilsdruf shepherd through a servant who had run away, taking advantage of the fire at the Tronkenburg, and that they originally belonged to the horse-dealer Kohlhaas. He asked the fellow, who stood with outstretched legs and hitched up his breeches, whether he really knew nothing about the matter;--whether the swineherd of Hainichen had not purchased them from the Wilsdruf shepherd (on which circumstance all depended), or from some third party, who might have obtained them from that source.