He rowed to the shore, but he could see no one for a while, for it was now dark. As he neared the landing-place, however, he became aware of the presence of two monks, garbed exactly like his late passenger, standing together, concealed by the shadow of the massive ruins.
"Here! here!" they cried.
"We would ye would ferry us over to yonder shore of the river," said the foremost of the twain. "We go afar on a weighty errand from the Convent of St. Thomas, and we must onwards this night. So be up quick, friend, and run us over soon."
"Step in, then," said the ferryman, not over courteously, for he remembered the trick played on him by their predecessor.
They entered the boat, and the ferryman put off. Just as the prow of the boat touched the opposite bank of the river, both sprang ashore, and disappeared at once from his view, like him who had gone before them.
"Ah!" said the ferryman, "if they call that doing good, or acting honestly, to cheat a hard-working poor fellow out of the reward of his labour, I do not know what bad means, or what it is to act knavishly."
He waited a little while to see if they would return to pay him, but finding that they failed to do so, he put across once more to his home at Andernach.
"Hilloa! ferry," again hailed a voice from the shore to which he was making, "hilloa!"
The ferryman made no reply to this suspicious hail, but pushed off his boat from the landing-place, fully resolved in his own mind to have nothing to do with any more such black cattle that night.
"Hilloa! ferry," was again repeated in a sterner voice. "Art dead or asleep?"