Louisa was unwilling to part with her father, but surrounded by so many friends, no further danger could threaten them, and to send tidings of their safety was the very thing she had ardently wished. The two horsemen, therefore, departed, and the remaining men divided themselves into two watches, to relieve one another, so as not to be overpowered by sleep. Werner, however, was excluded from these, for it now came out that he had been wounded by Von Schwanthal's shot, and was very weak from loss of blood. The wound, it is true, proved by no means dangerous, yet it called for rest. Von Schwanthal, when he first heard of it, was inconsolable, begged the young man's pardon a thousand times, offered to keep watch himself all night, then abused the doctor and his base accomplices again, and at last, proposed to permit their prisoner, who probably knew some little of surgery, at all events, to use his hands so far as to dress the wounded limb--the upper part of the right arm. Werner had, meanwhile, found a much dearer and better doctor, than him whom Von Schwanthal proposed--Bertha. Scarcely had she heard that the young man was wounded--wounded on her account--before she quickly, and with a strength which one would not have supposed her capable of, tore off the linen kerchief which she wore lightly tied round her neck, and begged--how could Werner resist such a request?--to be allowed to examine, and bind up the wounded limb. Her sister lent a helping hand, and Werner was ordered, notwithstanding all his opposition, to lie down and rest himself, so that he might not catch cold, and the wound, which then was not serious, be aggravated by inflammation. But he would not agree to this on any condition--not even upon the persevering request of the pretty girls; his place, he said, was beside the fire half the night, but the other half with the watch, to preserve those from harm whom he had been so fortunate as to save. Accordingly, it was so done; the men relieved each other regularly, although nothing suspicious further occurred, and, Normann was too securely guarded to escape. It was not till the sun rose on the following morning, in all his splendour and majesty, that they broke up to depart, and to follow the tracks of the horsemen who had ridden on before.