"He'll throw you," said the steward.
"Never mind," replied the boy. "Your whip! Up, allez!" and he cut the horse over the neck and galloped off at full speed. Oswald just saw how he leapt the broad ditch and took a short cut through the wood in order to reach the highroad more quickly, and thus to get through Fashwitz to the little town where the doctor lived.
CHAPTER XX.
The steward and Oswald had in the mean time succeeded, though not without difficulty, in putting the patient on the wagon, after having made him a kind of couch with the aid of some clothes and hay from the adjoining meadow. Mr. Wrampe's giant power seemed to be perfectly paralyzed by the fright. Oswald got into the wagon to support the servant, who was now in a state of lethargy, and the steward undertook to drive. Fortunately the distance was not very great, as the cottages lay on this side of the barns and outbuildings, and therefore much nearer than the château itself.
"You know where the man lives?" asked Oswald, as they came near the village.
"The very first house," answered Mr. Wrampe, turning round in the saddle and pointing with his whip at a cottage, which looked more like a large kennel than a habitation of men.
"Is he married?"
"Has been married," replied Mr. Wrampe, "but his poor wife--" here he broke off, casting a shy look at the man's pale face, as if he meant to say: Of the dead and deadly sick we ought to speak no evil.
"Has he any children?"
"Two; there they are at Mother Claus' door. Mother Claus! he! Jake has had his troubles again; put the children out of the way or they'll be frightened." The steward's sense of propriety had evidently been wonderfully developed by his wrong. The old woman seemed to be enjoying the last rays of the sun before the door of her cottage, while two little children were playing in the sand at her feet.