John Conrad stopped short and let his bundle slip to the ground. They had come out upon a great space, which a few months before had been an open heath. Now, as far as the eye could reach, stretched long lines of tents. It was no temporary lodging, for here and there small frame store buildings had been erected and there were long-used, dusty paths between the tents. Men and women and children were going about, meals were being prepared, there was everywhere the sound of voices. John Conrad stood still in amazement.
"What is this?" he asked.
A single sharp voice answered from the doorway of a sutler's shop.
"We are Germans, lured hither by promise of passage to America. Here we wait. Here we have waited for months. Have you come, oh, fool, to wait also?"
It was not the rudeness of the answer which startled John Conrad, nor the discouraging news which it announced, but the voice of the speaker. For the speaker was none other than his friend the magistrate of Oberdorf, supposed to be by now upon the high seas or in the new country.
[III]
BLACKHEATH
For a long moment Heinrich Albrecht, the magistrate of Oberdorf, and John Conrad Weiser, his friend, looked at each other. John Conrad was the first to speak, in a voice trembling with amazement and alarm.
"Have you returned, Heinrich?"