Stangrave looked, and joined in the general laugh of lieutenant, waiters, priests, and bourgeoises.
For under the chestnuts strutted, like him in Struwelpeter, as though he were a very king of Ashantee, Sabina's black boy, who had taken to himself a scarlet umbrella, and a great cigar; while after him came, also like them in Struwelpeter, Caspar, bretzel in hand, and Ludwig with his hoop, and all the naughty boys of Bertrich town, hooting and singing in chorus, after the fashion of German children.
The resemblance to the well-known scene in the German child's book was perfect, and as the children shouted,—
"Ein kohlpechrabenschwarzer Mohr,
Die Sonne schien ihm ins gehirn,
Da nahm er seinen Sonnenschirm"—
more than one grown person joined therein.
Stangrave longed to catch hold of the boy, and extract from him all news; but the blackamoor was not quite in respectable company enough at that moment; and Stangrave had to wait till he strutted proudly up to the door, and entered the hall with a bland smile, evidently having taken the hooting as a homage to his personal appearance.
"Ah? Mas' Stangrave? glad see you, sir! Quite a party of us, now, 'mong dese 'barian heathen foreigners. Mas' Thurnall he come dis mornin'; gone up picken' bush wid de ladies. He! he! Not seen him dis tree year afore."
"Thurnall!" Stangrave's heart sank within him. His first impulse was to order a carriage, and return whence he came; but it would look so odd, and, moreover, be so foolish, that he made up his mind to stay and face the worst. So he swallowed a hasty dinner, and then wandered up the narrow valley, with all his suspicions of Thurnall and Marie seething more fiercely than ever in his heart.
Some half-mile up, a path led out of the main road to a wooden bridge across the stream. He followed it, careless whither he went; and in five minutes found himself in the quaintest little woodland cavern he ever had seen.
It was simply a great block of black lava, crowned with brushwood, and supported on walls and pillars of Dutch cheeses, or what should have been Dutch cheeses by all laws of shape and colour, had not his fingers proved to them that they were stone. How they got there, and what they were, puzzled him; for he was no geologist; and finding a bench inside, he sat down and speculated thereon.