"Herr Pomuchelskopp," said David, "I came about the hides, and I wanted to ask about the wool. I got a letter----"

"Eh, what? wool and hides!" cried the notary. "You can talk about those afterward. We came for this particular business that you know about."

One may observe that the notary was a cunning business man, who could dispense with preliminaries, he took the bull by the horns, and that was what Pomuchelskopp liked,--he knew how to pull up nettles.

He went up to the notary, shook his hand, and motioned him to the sofa.

"Yes," said he, "it is a difficult, far-reaching piece of business."

"Hm? Well, we can make it long or short, as you like. But difficult? I have managed much harder case's. David has a bill for two thousand five hundred; I myself lent him last quarter eight hundred and thirty. Would you like the note? Here it is."

"It is good paper," said Pomuchelskopp, gently and composedly, and he stood up and took the money for it out of his pocket.

"Will you have mine too?" asked David.

"I will take yours also," said Pomuchelskopp, nodding his head with dignity, as if he were doing a great work for humanity. "But, gentlemen," he added, "I take them on this condition. Make out a bill, in my name, that you are indebted to me for the amount, and keep these notes and worry him with them. He must be only worried, for if we carry it too far he will get the money somewhere else, and the right time hasn't come yet."

"Yes," said the notary, "we understand; we can manage the business; but David has something else to tell you."

"Yes," said David, "I have a letter from P----, when he has been with his regiment, from Marcus Seelig, who writes me that he can buy up about two thousand dollars of the lieutenant's paper, and if you would like--what do you say?"

"Hm?" said Pomuchelskopp, "it is a good deal to take at one time; but--yes, you may get it for me."

"But I have a condition, too," said David. "You must sell me the wool."

"Well, why not?" said Slusuhr, slily treading on Pomuchelskopp's toes.

"Let him go and look at it."

Pomuchelskopp understood the sign, and complimented David out of doors that he might go and examine the wool, and, when he returned and seated himself on the sofa by the notary, the latter laughed loudly, and said, "We know each other!"

"What do you mean?" asked Pomuchelskopp, feeling as if he had stepped out of his coach into the mud.

"My friend," said the notary, slapping him on the shoulder, "I have known all along what you wanted, and, if you will pull at the same rope with me, you shall not fail of securing it."

Good heavens, what a sly fox! Pomuchelskopp was frightened.

"Herr Notary, I don't deny----"

"No need of words between us. If things go as they should, you shall get Pumpelhagen in time, and David shall have his compound interest, and I--ah, I could manage the business myself, but it is a little too much for me to undertake,--I will take a mill or a farm, and by and by set up as a landed proprietor myself. But it will cost you a good deal of money."

"That it will, G.o.d knows, a great deal of money; but that is no matter.

It torments me too much to look over at that beautiful estate; isn't it a sin and a shame it should be in such hands?"

The notary looked askance at him, as if to say, "Do you really mean that?"

"Well," said Pomuchelskopp, "what do you look at me so for?"

"Are you sure you are not joking?" said the notary, laughing. "If you want the end, you must use the means. You don't think that you can bring such an estate as Pumpelhagen to bankruptcy with a trumpery thousand thaler note? You must go to work on an entirely different plan; you must buy up all the mortgages on the estate."

"I will do that," whispered Pomuchelskopp, "but there is Moses, with his seven thousand thalers not to be got at."

"I have nothing to do with Moses, and desire nothing to do with him; but there is David, perhaps he can get it for us. But that is not all, by a great deal, that you must do. You must get on good terms with the lieutenant; as a friend, you can a.s.sist him in some temporary embarra.s.sment, and then, in a temporary embarra.s.sment of your own, sell his note,--to me, if you like,--so that I can worry him a little, and, finally, when the whole concern is ready to smash, then----"

"I will do it," whispered Pomuchelskopp impressively, "I will do it all; but I must have him here first. You must go to him directly with the notes, so that he may be obliged to leave the army."

"That is a small thing; if there is nothing more----"

"Yes, yes, but there is something more," said Pomuchelskopp, still whispering, as if he feared being betrayed by a listener, "there is that Habermann; and so long as that sly old watch-dog is there, we cannot get him into our power."

"Oh, how stupid you are!" and the notary laughed in his face. "Did you ever hear of a young man in pecuniary difficulties making a clean breast of it to an old friend like Habermann? I take it, the lieutenant is not different from the rest of the world. No, Habermann may stay at Pumpelhagen, for all that; but yet, if it is possible, we must get him away. He is too good a steward, and, if he manages Pumpelhagen as well as he has so far, the lieutenant can afford to keep us waiting a good while yet."

"He a good manager! He didn't manage very well for himself."

"Well, let him go! One mustn't undervalue things. But he must go."

"Yes, but how can we bring it about?"

"I can't do anything," laughed the notary, "but you--when you get the Herr Lieutenant with the bright dollars under his eyes, it will be easy to get an old, worn-out inspector turned off. The devil is in it, if you can't."

"Yes, yes," cried Pomuchelskopp, in a tone of annoyance; "but all that takes so long, and my wife is so impatient."

"She will have to wait," said the notary, very quietly, "such things are not done precipitately. Only think how long Pumpelhagen has been in the Rambow family; the change cannot take place in a hurry. But now, stop! David is coming; not a word of this before David! Do you understand? Say nothing to him but about his money affairs."

As David entered the room, he saw a couple of remarkably jolly faces.

Pomuchelskopp was laughing as if the Herr Notary had made an uncommonly witty remark, and the Herr Notary laughed, as if Pomuchelskopp had been telling the best joke in the world. But David was not so stupid as he appeared at the moment; he knew very well that he had been made an April fool of; and that his two colleagues had been discussing something beside jokes. "They have their secrets," said he to himself; "I have mine." He sat down by the table, with the stupidest Jew-lubber face, and nodding to Pomuchelskopp said, "I have looked at it."

"Well?" inquired Pomuchelskopp.

"Well," said David, shrugging his shoulders, "you say it has been washed, and it may have been washed, for all I know."

"What! Don't you believe me? Do you mean to say it isn't white as swan's-down?"

"Well, if it is swan's-down it may be swan's-down for all me."

"What are you driving at?"

"Look here! We got a letter from Lowenthal in Hamburg; the great Lowenthal house in Hamburg--the stone is fourteen dollars and a half."

"I know all that; you are always writing about that nonsense."

"A house like the Lowenthals doesn't write about nonsense."

"Eh, children," interrupted the notary, "this isn't business, this looks like a quarrel. Pomuchelskopp, let us have a couple of bottles of wine."

The Herr Notary was extremely familiar with the Herr Proprietor; but the Herr Proprietor rang, and, as Durting came, he said in a very friendly and pleasant way, for he was always pleasant in his own house, and especially to the women-kind, from his Hauning down to the little girls, "Durting, two bottles of wine, from those with the blue corks."

When the wine stood on the table, Pomuchelskopp filled three gla.s.ses, and then emptied his own; but David merely sipped at his. As the notary finished his gla.s.s, he said, "Now, gentlemen, let me tell you something," and he winked at David across the table, and under the table he trod on Pomuchelskopp's toes.

"You, David, can have fifteen dollars for the stone, and you, Pomuchelskopp"--here he trod on his toes again--"you don't care for ready money at present, if you can get good bonds you would like it all the better"--