Jochen drew a long breath; he was astonished himself to find how he could talk to-day--even his Stine would have done no better--and Herr Gotthold had said nothing at all--what could he say against it? Jochen continued in a still more persuasive tone: "And so you mustn't be so sad, Herr Gotthold, for the night doesn't last all the time, and unexpected things often happen, and when a horse once gets the bit between its teeth, a man may pull his arms off, but it will run away for all that; and what a horse can do, a man can too." "I shall not fail, Jochen," replied Gotthold, "and I am no longer wretched, for I know I shall fight my way through, although it is a difficult matter so long as we don't have Scheel. But I think we shall get the fellow yet; at least he isn't dead, and that is the main thing." Jochen Prebrow shook his great head. "It's a damned, miserable business, Herr Gotthold," said he. "Old Arent in Goritz saw him a week ago,--well, he certainly knows him, for the old man was at Dahlitz till Hinrich Scheel drove him away, but at night all cats are gray, and besides--there are so many chances of getting away from here by sea to Sweden or Mechlenburg or elsewhere. Therefore, it is very probable that he came here; but that he could be here still--no, that I don't believe." The crimson glow which blazed in the western horizon had faded, and as they turned towards the east in descending from the summit of the down, the sea from the shore to the farthest horizon spread before them in a deep blue expanse, against which the white sand of the beach was relieved with singular distinctness. The chain of downs, upon whose highest point they had just been standing, stretched towards the north in a vast confused mass, which in the twilight seemed endless, here overgrown with coarse grass and broom, yonder in dreary baldness, rounded, lengthened, flattened, with sharp overhanging edges, like a sea which, while lashed by a tempest, had suddenly been converted into sand. Yonder, where the western shore projected farthest--Wiessow Point they called the narrow tongue of land--a roof, just visible to the eye, appeared above the downs, and Jochen Prebrow pointed towards it with his spy-glass. "Do you see that house?" "A part of it." "That's where the Rahnkes live; I shouldn't like to be in their skins to-day." "Why, what is going on there?" asked Gotthold.