"We have not found her," said he, "so the others may not either, and in that case there would still be hope, although it is not probable that she could have gone far with the child in the darkness."
"With the child?" cried Gotthold, "with Gretchen! then all is well; she would do the child no injury."
"Injury!" said the old man, "injury! there are greater injuries than death."
Gotthold shuddered. She had not been willing to part from the child; she had thought herself obliged to bear--able to bear--anything for its sake. Now matters had become unendurable, and she was compelled to cast the burden aside. What would become of Gretchen? There are worse injuries than death.
CHAPTER XXVII.
They walked rapidly towards the house, old Boslaf still leading the way with his long, regular strides, his eyes now bent upon the ground, and anon gazing keenly into the gloom of the gathering twilight; but he did not speak, and Gotthold asked no questions. Yet before he reached the court-yard, he knew--from various remarks made by the other men--that when, towards noon, the rumor spread abroad among the laborers that the mistress had disappeared with her child, it was said at once that they were dead. No one had been the first to utter the words; every one had spoken them at the same time, and suggested that somebody should go to Cousin Boslaf. Cousin Boslaf had come instantly--with his old long-barrelled gun over his shoulder--and divided the men into parties. Statthalter Möller, with one band, was to cross the fields and search the forest near the seashore. Prebrow, the blacksmith, who had been sent for, was to head another company and go to the upper part of the moor, towards the Schanzenbergen; and Cousin Boslaf himself, with the remainder, down to the morass; then they would all meet at the house again. Two hours before--they were then still farther out in the morass, and there was some little fog, though it was by no means so thick--they had seen Herr Brandow come home, and very soon after ride away again. He had taken a wise course, for the men had resolved that the murderer should not leave the estate alive again; it was no matter about Hinrich Scheel, who was as bad as his master; but his wife and child--it was too much, and they had always said it would happen some day.
They had all said so and had let it happen! True, they had been unable to prevent it; but he! Gotthold thought his heart would burst with shame and horror.
They reached the house almost at the same moment as the two other parties, who had carefully searched the region assigned to them, and found nothing, not the smallest trace.
What was to be done now?
Very little more could be done. True, the fog had dispersed, but twilight had already closed in; in half an hour, or an hour at latest, it would be perfectly dark. Besides, the men, who ever since noon had been constantly on their feet, searching bushes and woods, fields and morass, were evidently fatigued and exhausted, though quite ready to search the forest in the direction of Dahlitz, as soon as they had eaten the supper Cousin Boslaf had ordered to be brought out from the house. The old man himself neither eat nor drank; he stood with folded arms, leaning against the trunk of one of the huge old lindens, waiting patiently until the men should once more be ready to help him seek his great-granddaughter, the last of his race, at the bottom of the marl-pit, the depths of some forest ravine, or wherever she had fled with her child to die.