"We cannot go back to Zehrendorf," I said.
"Why not?"
"If Jock Swart has betrayed us, as I would take my oath he has, they will certainly search Zehrendorf."
"Let them try it once," cried the Wild Zehren; "I will send them home with broken heads. No, no; they will not venture that, or they would have tried it long ago. At Zehrendorf we are as safe as in Abraham's bosom."
Just as he said these words there was a sudden gleam of light in the distance ahead of us, like a faint flash of lightning. Before I could frame any conjecture as to its cause, it flashed out once more, this time more vividly, and not vanishing again. The light increased every moment, rising higher and higher against the black sky with a steadily widening glare.
"Trantowitz is on fire!" cried Herr von Zehren.
It was not Trantowitz; it could not be Trantowitz, that lay further to the left and much lower. At Trantowitz there were not the lofty trees whose summits I could now distinguish in the glow which burned now red and now yellow, but ever brighter and brighter.
"By heaven it is my own house!" said Herr von Zehren, He rushed forward for a few paces, and then stopping, burst into a loud laugh. It was a hideous mirth.
"This is a good joke," he said; "they are burning the old nest down. That is smoking the old fox out of his den with a vengeance."
He seemed to think that this also was the work of his pursuers. But I recalled the threats which old Pahlen had uttered when I drove her off the place. I remembered that among the rest she had said something about "the red cock crowing from the roof."