Hinrich Scheel's only reply was several violent lashes, which urged the horses onward again, but only a few paces, then they stopped once more, snorting still louder, and pressing backward so that the carriage moved a little down the hill.
"The damned jades!" cried Hinrich Scheel, who was no longer on his seat on the box, but standing on the right of the carriage.
"What is the matter, I say?" cried Gotthold, starting up.
"Nothing at all," shouted Hinrich. "Sit still. The damned jades! This little pull! I'll teach them to shirk. Sit still, we shall be up directly! Damn the whip!"
Hinrich, who had been lashing the horses frantically, now disappeared from the side of the carriage, the frightened animals made a few more bounds forward--suddenly the vehicle leaned towards the left--farther and farther; like a flash of lightning the thought passed through Gotthold's mind, that if the carriage should upset here, it would undoubtedly fall sixty feet down the slope into the morass; he already had his hand on the back to swing himself out on the right, but would not save himself without his companion. But the latter did not rise, did not even stir. He seized him to drag him out of the carriage. Too late! There was a dull roaring, rushing, rattling, as if the earth itself was opening to engulf carriage, horses, and men; a whizzing sound in their ears--a terrible shock, a falling, rolling, crashing,--another crashing, rolling, shattering, and then--the horror was over!
CHAPTER XXII.
In the large comfortable room adjoining the office, in the subdued light of a beautiful lamp--the companion to which was burning on a side-table at the end of the room--sat Frau Ottilie Wollnow and Alma Sellien; Ottilie engaged in sewing; while Alma leaned back in the sofa corner, with her slender hands resting idly in her lap. Before the ladies, on a high-backed chair drawn forward in the light, stood Gotthold's picture of Dollan, at which Alma from time to time threw one of her languishing glances. If the gentlemen came back that evening, she wanted to give Gotthold a pleasant surprise by showing him the interest she took in his work, and therefore the picture, which had just been taken down at her request, must remain in its present position.
"I am only afraid it may slip down and get injured," said Ottilie; "and besides, I am not at all sure they will come back this evening."
"I don't know what their return has to do with my enjoyment of art," answered Alma, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking at the picture with an evident increase of interest. "In what bold relief these beeches stand in the foreground! how easily the eye glides over the fields in the centre, and lingers there in refreshing repose, ere it turns with delight to the brown moor on the left, or wanders longingly towards the dim blue horizon bounded by the sea! He is really a great artist."
Ottilie laughed. "And do you mean to say all that to him?"