"I can't help laughing at it, though," said Speckbacher; "it was taking the law so into their own hands. His ardour for us was already beginning to cool; and, for my part, I think he has done us very little good, from first to last. But here we are. I was on my way to the superintendent; but you have never seen the mines: would not you like to do so?"
"Very much."
"Come this way, then—I will find you a miner's overcoat and staff. They will give us flambeaux."
Hofer presently found himself descending the noted three hundred steps, with considerable excitement, and a little trepidation. He seemed entering a new world, the withdrawal of daylight from which gave it something inexpressibly dismal. The interminable galleries and caverns, the unfathomed lakes, the dim lights, the hollow, unearthly sounds, sensibly affected his imagination; and when they now and then came up to a solitary miner, with his little candle, constantly striking his axe into the wall before him, a profound feeling of pity towards him oppressed his kind heart.
"It is wonderful! truly wonderful!" ejaculated he, as they once more emerged into the warm sunlight; "but I am very glad to find myself out of it. I could not help thinking of poor wretches in the bottomless pit."
"Hofer! when you were comparing the true believer, just now, to metal molten over the fire, I could not help thinking that their foes are like the crackling sticks in that fire, that help to heat the silver. They are unintelligent agents; they make a great blaze, and shine very bright, for a little while. How soon they become extinct!"
"Ah! I never like to think of it,—it melts me with sorrow. If the true believer has such a hard fight of it, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? Brother, let us leave such matters to the God who made those salt caverns. I thought, before I entered them, they would afford me a good opportunity for some more talk with you about to-morrow; but when I was once within them, the God of nature made me hold my peace."
"Here is a niche, Anderl, where we can sit and talk our fill. It seems to me we shall very likely fall short of powder and bullets—what can we do?"
They sat down and arranged, as well as they could, the plans for the morrow. But they were, after all, unskilled tacticians, as far as science went: men rather of deeds than words, who felt a certain consciousness of what they themselves could do, and what they could expect from one another. However, before they parted, they had decided their own parts in what proved to be the most important struggle that occurred during the Tyrolean war.