He threw himself full length on the grass, but hard as the words sounded, there was a tremor in his tone which told of pain and passion. The young heir only shook his head soberly while he put a new bait on his hook and for a few minutes there was perfect silence.
Then suddenly something black swooped down like a flash of lightning from the height above them into the water, and a second later rose again in the air with the slippery, glittering prey in its beak.
"Bravo, that was a good catch!" cried Hartmut, rising. But Will spoke angrily.
"The wretched robber robs our whole pond. I will speak to the forester and tell him to fill him full of lead."
"A robber?" repeated Hartmut, as his glance followed the heron who was just disappearing behind the high tree tops. "Yes, of course, but how fine it must be to live such a free robber's life up there in the air. To descend like a flash for your booty and be up and off again where no one can follow; that's a hunt that pays."
"Hartmut, I verily believe you'd take pleasure in such a wild, lawless life," said Willibald, with the repugnance of a well-trained boy for such sentiments.
His companion laughed, but it was the same bitter laugh without the joyousness of youth in its sound.
"Well, if I had any such desire, they'd take it out of me at the military academy. There obedience and discipline is the Alpha and Omega of all things. Will, have you never wished that you had wings?"
"I, wings?" asked Will, whose whole attention was again directed to his bait. "How ridiculous! Who would wish for impossibilities?"
"I only wish I had them," cried Hartmut excitedly. "I would I were one of the falcons from whom we take our name. Then I would mount higher and always higher in the blue sky towards the sun, and never come back again."