"I looked, but I didn't find you; he told me afterwards that you were lying half-way down the slope, and besides the time I was crawling about in the dark seemed very long, and there was a rustling among the reeds, and then the other horse, which had broken loose from the carriage and run out into the morass with the pole--stupid beast!--began to scream, and it is a pitiful sound to hear a dying animal shriek in its agony, and so I came up again on dry land." "And was Herr Brandow already there?" "How do you know that?" asked Hinrich in astonishment. "I only imagined so." "No, he wasn't there then, but he came directly after, and I was furious because he had taken Brownlock; besides, what business had he there? I told him so too, and said he must go back at once; but he wouldn't; people had seen him ride away, and where should he say he had been when this story came out? I had offered him the package, but he knocked it out of my hand, and it lay on the ground between us, and I said it might stay there. 'So it can for aught I care,' said he; 'I didn't do it for the money;' and then he asked what had become of you? I gave him a short answer, for I was angry, and then he said I must turn back at once, and--and--'Do it alone, sir,' said I, 'I'll have nothing more to do with it.' He begged my pardon, but I wouldn't make up, out of pure ill-temper, and now he again grew anxious about what account he could give of his whereabouts during this time, till I said to him: 'As you have Brownlock under you, sir, you can just as well ride across the bog, and then you will get to Neuenhof as soon as if you had ridden away from Dollan directly after the gentlemen: I mean, of course, over the road.' He saw this too, but his courage failed, although he generally had plenty for such things, and I myself had ridden across the bog a week before under his own eyes; so I said to him: 'Then do what you choose, I must go and knock up the Prebrows now, or I shall come in for all the blame,' and then he rode away, and it was a splendid sight--I could see it distinctly, for the moon had come out--and the water dashed up under the hoofs--yes, it was a splendid sight to see how he rode." Hinrich walked on a few steps in silence; suddenly he stopped short.