"Drove you out of the house! Very good," said Wollnow, when he had made a written record of the words. "And Sellien still had the money when you went away?"
"I felt the packet when I buttoned his overcoat; he was then partially intoxicated."
"And the overcoat was still buttoned when Lauterbach wanted to bandage his injuries here. So you said a short time ago, and Lauterbach confirms it. Did you make no attempt to remove his clothes at the smithy?"
"No. Old Prebrow wanted to do so, but Sellien, who came to his senses for a moment, begged so earnestly to be let alone, that we desisted, and contented ourselves with making him as comfortable a bed as we could on some straw and hay in the bottom of the wagon the Prebrows had already prepared."
"And did you feel the pocket-book there too?"
Gotthold reflected a moment. "No," said he, "he did not have it there. I remember now, because first the old man and then I myself felt his breast, as he complained of severe pain in his left ribs. I could not have helped feeling the packet. That is certainly strange."
"It is indeed," replied Wollnow, "since neither of the worthy Prebrows, father and son, who carried him from the place where the accident occurred to the smithy, can have taken it out of his pocket."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Gotthold.
"And it is almost equally impossible, though in another sense, that during his fall he can have lost it out of the pocket of a closely-buttoned coat, over which another was buttoned."
"Yet there is no other supposition."