"What, sir? You who wear the honourable symbol of a defender of your country in your cap, decline----"

A sudden movement on the part of the stranger, who grasped his pistols, made him break off. The next moment he saw firearms gleam in his hand, saw him spring up, and stood aghast, staring into a pale, overcast face that he knew well, but from which two such angry eyes had never blazed at him before.

He understood the situation at once; he stood face to face with a man desperately resolved to go to any extremity if necessary.

"Look at me, Felix Merckel," said the stranger, who was stranger no longer, "and learn that I wish to have nothing to say to you. But understand that if you or any of your friends come too near, they will rue it. The first who approaches within an inch of me I will shoot down like a dog."

Felix Merckel quickly regained his composure.

"Ah! the _Herr Baron_!" he exclaimed, with a profound bow. "Now I am not surprised that Prussia's----"

The click of the double trigger of the cavalry pistol made him stop short again.

"I warn you once more, Felix Merckel. I am an officer as well as yourself."

And the reiterated warning had its effect.

"Certainly, it is not my concern," Felix said, and with another low bow, went back to his place; this time the clatter of his spurs was scarcely audible.

The Schrandeners put their heads together and whispered, and then old Merckel entered the room. His round, sleek, clean-shaven face beamed with prosperity and self-satisfaction. As beseemed the village patriarch, he pa.s.sed by the common drinking-table with a dignified gait. A heavy silver watch-chain hung on his greasy satin waistcoat, suspended from a gold keeper in the form of a Moor's head, to which was also attached an amber heart.

"The _Herr_ wished to speak to me?" he asked, with a profound obeisance, which, however, he seemed to repent, when his little grey lynx eyes remarked that the stranger had no gla.s.s before him. To be obsequious to a non-drinker was a waste of time.

The Schrandeners kept their ears open. Felix had jumped up as if to seize this favourable opportunity of going for his whilom friend with his fists.

"I say, father, it's the young _Herr Baron_," he exclaimed, with a discordant laugh.

Old Merckel withdrew a few steps. His benevolent smile died on his lips; his fleshy fingers fumbled nervously with the Moor's-head keeper.

"Can I speak to you alone?"

"Oh! _Herr Baron_--of course, _Herr Baron_--is the _Herr Baron_ going to stay?"

He flung wide a side door, which opened into the little best parlour reserved for gentry. A sofa, covered with slippery oil-cloth, and a few velvet, bulky arm-chairs, were ready for the reception of distinguished customers. Over a cabinet containing tobacco hung a placard with the inscription, "Only wine drunk here."

Before the host closed the door behind Boleslav, he made a rea.s.suring sign to his fellow-burghers as if to allay their anxiety. Then from under his drooping lids he took a rapid survey of the newly-returned young aristocrat's person, which seemed to fill him with satisfaction, for again his smug, slimy smile played about his fat lips.

"How the _Herr Junker_ has grown, to be sure!" he began. "Wonderful!"

Boleslav fixed his eyes on him silently.

"And the _Herr Junker_--pardon, I ought to say Herr Baron--has come home to find the old Herr Baron no longer alive. A pity he was not in time to close the eyes of the sainted dead----"

He broke off, and caught violently at his amber heart, for Boleslav's piercing, threatening gaze began to make him feel uneasy. What if this was a desperado, who would think nothing of taking him by the throat?

"At any rate I have come in time," Boleslav burst forth at last, "to repair the shameful scandal that has been perpetrated here in refusing my father the last honour due to his position."

"Shameful scandal, my _Herr Baron_?"

"I advise you, my worthy man, not to put on that air of saint-like innocence. I can read you through and through. Something has come to my ears concerning you, for which you deserve to be thrashed on the spot."

"_Herr Baron_!" and he showed signs of taking flight through the door.

"Stay where you are!" commanded Boleslav, barring the way. Thank G.o.d that in confronting this sc.u.m he felt the old inherited instinct of conscious power come back to him. "Is this the grat.i.tude you show my house, to whose favours you owe everything?"

This was true enough. The present landlord of the Black Eagle had once hung about the Castle in search of a situation, and had finally, as its ubiquitous commissionaire, ama.s.sed a considerable fortune, although he now chose to adopt an att.i.tude of injured virtue, and rubbed his hands self-righteously.

"Dear _Herr Baron_," he said, a paternal kindliness suffusing his broad countenance, "I willingly pardon the insults you have just heaped on me, and will give you the best advice, as if nothing had happened. Now, you will surely understand how friendly are my intentions."

"I decline your friendship," thundered Boleslav. "As mayor of the village of Schranden, you will answer my questions. Beyond that, I have no dealings with you."

"The Schrandeners, dear _Herr Baron_, are really terrible people. I always have said so. I said so many times to my dear wife. You knew her, _Herr Baron_. Why, of course, she often took the little _Junker_ in her arms, little thinking that----"

"Keep to the point, if you please," Boleslav interrupted.

"'Marianne,' I used to say, 'these Schrandeners, when once they get an idea into their heads, nothing will move them.' Once they took it into their heads not to drink my brandy. Good, pure, beautiful Wacholder, _Herr Baron_. In the same way they've now got it into their heads not to bury the old n.o.ble lord, and--well, upon my word, no G.o.d and no devil will force them to do it. It's no good _your_ trying either, _Herr Baron_. I'll tell you why. The hea.r.s.e belongs to the corporation, and they won't let you have it. Horses, too, they wouldn't let out....

As for bearers--dear G.o.d! Go round the village and see if you can find one, and if you can, see if he is not well flogged for it quarter of an hour afterwards. Oh! these Schrandeners! And then there is the _Herr Pastor_--who really in the end has the most voice in the matter. Go to the _Herr Pastor_, and hear what _he_ says. Putting ceremonials and paternosters out of the question, you won't even get the coffin made."

"We shall see," said Boleslav, gnashing his teeth. He felt his spirit of resistance rise, the more clearly he saw the web that hatred and malice were weaving around him.

"You _shall_ see," exclaimed old Merckel in badly concealed triumph, "if you wish it, _Herr Baron_."

He opened the door of the tap-room, from whence proceeded a low hum of many voices. Half the village seemed to have collected there during Boleslav's interview with the mayor.

"Hackelberg! come here!" he called, and then hurriedly banged the door to again, for he saw hands laid on it that threatened to tear it off its hinges.

"If he has got over his debauch of yesterday, _Herr Baron_, he will certainly come and himself give you his views on the subject." For a moment the little lynx eyes sparkled with malignant joy. Then resuming his benevolent patriarchal smile, he went on, twisting the amber heart.

"You have repudiated my friendship, young man. You have insulted me, and shown no respect for my grey hairs--I don't resent it. You wouldn't have done it if you had known how I, at the risk of my life--for if the Schrandeners had got wind of it they would have done me to death--how I saved many a time the n.o.ble baron, of blessed memory, from starvation.

Ask the _Fraulein_.

"What _Fraulein_?"

"The pretty, faithful _Fraulein_ Regina--your deceased father's best beloved. She is a pearl, _Herr Baron_; you ought to hold her in high esteem, and take her away with you on your travels. Often in the darkness of the night have I stuck a loaf and a sausage in her ap.r.o.n, _Herr Baron_, and sometimes a pound of coffee, _Herr Baron_, while I have made my own breakfast off rye-bread for fear of the embargo, _Herr Baron_."

"Weren't you paid for your trouble?"

"Well; yes, yes. When one risks one's life one expects to be paid.

There is still a little bill due, however, _Herr Baron_, left standing from last winter; if the _Herr Baron_ will have the goodness to----"

"Write out your account, and the money shall be sent you."

"There's no hurry, _Herr Baron_. I have confidence; can trust you, _Herr Baron_. What I wish to say is, take the advice of an old and experienced man, and go home now without more ado; dig a grave behind the Castle, and lay the deceased _Herr_ in it--do it at night, mind, on the quiet, quite on the quiet--_Fraulein_ Regina will a.s.sist you--then make the turf perfectly smooth, so that no one will know where you've laid him, and before the dawn of another day ride away again with _Fraulein_ Regina on your saddle to where----"

He paused suddenly, for Boleslav's hand was on the b.u.t.t-end of his pistols. Then the devilish mockery beneath this suave old hypocrite's counsel was goading him into drastic measures. While he listened to it, a new thought had flashed across his brain with vivid distinctness. The funeral would after all only be the first step in the work that it was inc.u.mbent on him to complete. Never would he slink away under cover of night like a criminal, and abandon what remained of the inheritance of his ancestors to utter ruin. No! he would stay and endure all things.

Set at defiance all these malicious hyenas, the worst of whom stood before him, now grinning, with greedily gleaming eyes, only awaiting his opportunity to pounce on the masterless unowned possessions.

Endure! Endure!