"It may be--not! If, in the heart of the young wife, true love should awake later, if another .... Good heavens, Hartmann! cannot you lead your men farther off. You are covering us with a perfect cloud of dust, you and your regiment!"
The young miner, to whom these words were addressed, and who was passing at the head of about fifty of his comrades, gave a contemptuous glance at the carefully appointed dress of the speaker, and another at the sandy carriage-road, where the miners' heavy shoes certainly had raised some dust.
"Right about face!" he cried, and the column wheeled round with almost military precision, taking the direction indicated.
"What a bear that Hartmann is!" said Wilberg, fanning the dust from his coat with his handkerchief. "Not a word of excuse for his awkwardness! 'Right about face!' in a tone of command, like a general at the head of his troops. And then he takes so much upon himself! If his father had not put in his word, he would have forbidden the girl Martha to recite my poem composed for the bride's reception, my poem--which I" ....
"Have already read aloud to everybody," finished the chief-engineer in an undertone to the Director. "If only it were a little shorter! but he is right; it was audacious of Hartmann to wish to forbid it. You should not have posted him and his people just on this spot; there is no sort of welcome to be looked for from them. They are the most rebellious fellows on the whole works."
The Director shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, but then they are the finest men. I have stationed all the others in the village and on the road, the élite of our people ought to be at the chief entrance, the post of honour. On an occasion like this, one wishes to make a show of one's belongings."
The young miner, who was thus being discussed, had, in the meantime, stationed his comrades round the triumphal arch and placed himself at their head. The Director was right; they were fine fellows, but they were all surpassed by their leader, who towered high above them. He had a powerful, well-knit frame, this Hartmann, and he looked to full advantage in his dark miner's dress. His face would hardly have been called handsome, if judged by the strict laws of symmetry. The brow might have seemed too low, the lips too full, the lines not noble enough; but those sharply-cut and well-marked features were certainly no ordinary ones.
The light curly hair lay thick on the broad massive forehead, and a wavy brown beard encircled the lower part of the face, the manly bronze of which did not betray that it was so often deprived of air and sunshine. His parted lips had a defiant look, and in the rather sombre expression of his blue eyes lay a something which can hardly be defined, but which impressed itself at once on ordinary minds, and was respected by them, as the sure token of a superior mind. His whole appearance was that of energy incarnate, and however little sympathy his stiff, unbending bearing might excite, it yet commanded attention at the first glance.
An older man who, although wearing the miner's dress, did not appear to belong to the working-men, drew near now, accompanied by a young girl, and came close up to the group.
"Good day to you. Here we are ready to take our part. How do things go, Ulric? Are you all in order?"