"O master! is it you?" cried he. "O master! master!"
"Draw me in, Hans,—draw me gently,—I have broken some bone, I think—"
"Alas! alas! and we knew not what had become of you—my dame and I. We had given you over as lost. And to think of the poor Sandwirth being shot!"—
"Hold!—"
Speckbacher began to cry like a child. His sobs grew deeper and deeper, till they were terrible to hear. The awe-stricken peasants stood beside him, pressing their hands hard together, without venturing to proffer a word. "Tell me how it all was," said he, at length drying his eyes, and then bursting out anew.
Hans told all he had heard; and Speckbacher continued to weep. At length, the good woman of the cottage got him to bed, tended him carefully, and gave him a warm drink in which she had infused a few drops of the steinbock's blood, that rare and sovereign remedy for all hurts in the mountains!
"This will throw you into a violent perspiration and put you soundly to sleep," said she sapiently; "and after twenty-four hours in bed, you will be quite well. The water in which I have bathed your wounds had had the ball that shot the steinbock boiled in it, for that also is of sovereign virtue in cases such as these."
Speckbacher did not lack faith; and, exhausted by sorrow, pain, and fatigue, he soon justified his hostess's prediction by sleeping profoundly, and for many hours. When he woke, it was with a heavy heart. Hans had called in a village doctor to see to the dislocated hip-joint; the case required inaction, but spies were abroad, and Hans did not believe his safety from them could be reckoned on for a moment. When night closed in, therefore, these two faithful men took the tall Speckbacher in their arms, and carried him through by-paths to his own cottage at Rinn, two good leagues off, where they deposited him in the stable.
Zoppel, sleeping in the loft, drowsily called out—