CHAPTER XVII.
Daylight had long since disappeared when Oswald and Faith alighted from their wagon at a solitary inn beyond the Bohemian boundary. 'Here you are for the present in safety,' said the conductor who had brought them from Friedland, knocking at the door. 'The people of the house are honest, and of our faith at heart. The vicinity is full of secret Hussites.'
'Who comes so late?' asked a little, dark-complexioned old woman, opening the door with her hand held before a flickering torch.
'A young wedded pair, mother Thekla,' answered the conductor, 'who are fleeing before the converters. Receive them kindly and take good care of them. God will reward you for it.'
'It is but our duty,' said the woman. 'Come in, poor creatures.'
'Farewell,' said the conductor to Oswald. 'I intend to return directly; for my wife and children may not be safely left without a protector among the reckless soldiery.'
'And, that you have brought me here--' said Oswald, forcing into his hand a couple of dollars over and above the fee agreed upon....
'I have already forgotten it,' said the conductor, laughing. 'Besides, when I get into the forest, I intend to load my wagon with wood, which I shall gaily drag into Friedland early in the morning, and nobody will think of asking me what freight I took thence. May God protect you!'
He mounted his wagon and drove rapidly away, while Oswald led his companion into the bar-room. To their great satisfaction it was tolerably empty. Only in one corner of the room snored three men and four large hounds on some straw, and at a table near the gray-headed host, with a goblet before him, sat a large strongly built man in the dress of a Bohemian peasant. Oswald observed the sabre which the guest bore, and the large knife in his girdle, with some suspicion; but the honest lineaments and saddened expression of his brown, haggard face, again inspired him with confidence. He courteously seated himself at the table and called for a glass of wine, while Faith was arranging with the hostess for a supper and accommodations for the night.
'You are in flight on account of your faith, as I hear, my dear sir?' asked the stranger in a voice of the deepest bass, and at the same time glancing at him mistrustfully with his wild, black eyes.
'The time and weather would have been badly chosen for a journey of pleasure,' peevishly answered Dorn.
'You must surely have come from Jauer, or Loewenberg, or Schweidnitz?' further asked the man; 'for they are very strenuously pushing the counter-reformation in those places just now. 'You are by far too curious!' cried Oswald, with displeasure. 'I do not willingly listen to such questions from strangers.'
'It is the business of my office to ask questions, my young gentleman,' thundered the stranger; 'for I am a captain of Bohemian provincial troops, and am stationed here upon the border to guard against the influx of Silesian heretics.'
While he said this, the four hounds sprang up and placed themselves growling before Oswald, and the three men half raised their bodies from the straw, their flashing eyes peering from their dark brown faces, and their well scoured muskets glistening in their hands. Oswald instantly arose and drew his sword.
'Put up your weapon!' the man now cried in an altered tone, seizing his goblet. 'I but wished to be certain of my man. Come, be again quietly seated, and do me justice in a fresh goblet. The Bohemian goose and Silesian swan!'
'Huss and Luther!' cried Oswald touching glasses and emptying his own with a lighter heart, while the hounds and soldiers again stretched themselves upon the straw.
'Do not be offended that I thought it necessary to prove you,' said the Bohemian; 'but the tricks and artifices of the papists are so manifold, that these precautions are rendered quite necessary. You might have been a spy of the Jesuits. Since we now understand each other, however, I may converse with you without reserve. You are not safe even here. For my old friend, our host, I will indeed be answerable; but the converters sometimes come over the border to us; especially when they deem that they have important game in view; and you appear to me as though you might be of some consequence. Therefore, if it be agreeable, I will conduct you and your little wife to a place, where you may dwell in peace behind the everlasting walls which the Lord himself has built for the defence of persecuted innocents.'
'There is no falsehood in that face!' answered Oswald; 'and I accept your offer with gratitude.'
'You will not indeed find our residence very elegant,' said the Bohemian; 'and that delicate female form may be wholly unaccustomed to such quarters; but necessity reconciles one to privations, and a very little suffices for our actual necessities.'
'Be not concerned on that account,' said Faith, who had now seated herself near Oswald. 'A safe shelter is all we wish.'
'Well, eat your supper,' said the Bohemian, 'and retire quickly to rest, that you may be ready to start by day-break in the morning. I have been long accustomed to watch through the night, and will guard you faithfully. With the rising sun we shall be among the rocks.'