So again we had a friend, and were off again, only waiting long enough for Humfried, a very zealous and honest fellow, to clap a saddle on an ungainly but fairly swift pad, and ride himself to guide us. The chase was ending at last in very truth, though only heaven knew the fortune of our hunting. Humfried could tell with a certainty the glade where the Ruhla road crossed the main highway from Eisenach, and here, unless all calculations failed, we would find the Cardinal in ambush for his prey. But would we be in time? I knew Luther’s habits well; how sometimes he set forth before cockcrow. Once or twice even my warm hopes would falter, and a shadow of fear would cross my mind. To come so close? to fail? Ah, Heaven which had done so much, had not that bitter cup in store! But whenever I doubted I was reassured by the flashing light in my Lady’s eyes, and she spoke the word that had cheered us all the way. “God is with us!” And I only answered, “Even so--yet faster!” Onward and onward, with a view now of Schloss Altenstein upon a distant crest; now ever mounting the hillocks; now flying with deadened hoof beats under venerable pines across their carpets of needles; now into the clear sunshine of green meadows; now again under the shimmering green and gold of the kingly beeches. Suddenly Humfried, who rode at our head, held up a warning hand and drew rein. “Softly. Here is the glade,” he enjoined. Our horses fell to a walk. We crossed a swift little brook, and mounted slowly a steep slope. Before us opened a wide green lane, closed in on either side by the dense forest. There we halted. For a moment our senses caught nothing more noxious than the purling of the brook and the rustling of the trees, but Gunter (sly forester) pointed down. The fresh tracks of many horses were on the clean sod beside the way. Dismounting and nosing around like a fox he quickly made plain whither the party had turned aside into the greenwood. Humfried confirmed his judgment. Manifestly Forli (who doubtless had with him some rascal who knew the country well) had withdrawn into the dense covert overlooking the angle of the Eisenach and Ruhla roads, whence any traveller upon the former was at his mercy. Our task was exceeding plain. “Ah! Wälterchen, must it be again--these?” asked Ilsa, for the first time on the ride a little pale, when she saw me look to the charges of my pistols after we dismounted. “Would that I could pleasure you,” I replied, with a shake of the head. “It is men’s work now, and not woman’s; but pray God it is soon over. There will be no blood if I can spare it; yet what must be, must.”