"Why should he know? I don't know why you are running after him as a cat chases a mouse."
"Bah!"
"Nor why you came back from Plüggenhof so soon, have ridden the horses half to death, and gave me a louis-d'or when I told you I had seen him."
"I'll give you six if you'll tell me where I can find him," cried Carl Brandow, turning eagerly in his saddle.
"Where you can find him? Why that's easy enough; with the old man in the beach-house yonder."
"Where I cannot seek him."
"Without having the old man send a bullet through your body. Six louis-d'or! I think I should wait a long time for the money. But I will tell you where you can find him without the gold, if you'll let me ride Brownlock across the bog."
"Are you crazy?"
"I will cross it faster than you can cross the hill. Can I go?"
Before them the road ran in a tolerably steep ascent over a hill, an outlying spur of the Schanzenberge on the left, which stretched some distance into the moor. On the right of this hill a broad tract of marshy land extended across the moor to the forest, where it found an outlet in the stream whose course to the sea Gotthold had followed that afternoon. The summit of the hill had undoubtedly sunk into the marsh years before, for the long mound of earth divided it like a wall, which at the time it was engulfed had doubtless been very steep, but in the course of years had been so much washed away by the trickling of water down the hillside that, it now formed an irregular slope, along whose upper edge ran the old carriage road, while farther up the acclivity large stones made the way impassable for vehicles, although horsemen and pedestrians might wind through. The condition of affairs had probably not been so bad when Bogislaf and Adolf Wenhof were obliged to drive their horses along here at full gallop, for now no man in his senses would pass the spot in a carriage except at a walk, and Jochen Prebrow was perfectly right when he said that it would have been easy for him--or any one else--to execute Curt's wild order, and hurl the young pair down the slope into the bog on their wedding day.