Carl Brandow laughed scornfully as he put the letter back into his pocket and took up the reins again.
"I believe the devil has his finger in the pie. Ever since I have known that the man will come here, I have been pursued by the thought that he, and only he, can save me. Why? Probably because only a fool would take the trouble, and he is the greatest one I ever knew. And while I drove by under his very nose this morning, everybody rushes forward to put me on the track he so carefully conceals. It was plain that the man Jochen dared not tell where he was, either this morning or just now, but he belongs to the class of people for whom we are willing to go out of our way. And what a charming surprise it will be for her, if I can bring him to her."
Again the rider laughed, even more bitterly than before, then stopped suddenly, gnawing his under lip with his teeth as he struck with his riding-whip at the overhanging boughs.
"How pale she grew when the parson blundered out the news. Of course she did not wish it to be noticed, of course. But unluckily we observe everything in a person with whom we have enjoyed the pleasure of daily intercourse for nine or ten years! How she looked when I took my departure so soon after, as if she knew the cause, and how silent she was on the way, although I exerted all my powers of pleasing. She no longer believes in my amiability, nor I either; but I have so often vexed her about the man that I might surely make him afford her pleasure for once. And if, as is very probable, the silly swain is playing at hide and seek more on her account than mine--why it will be all the easier to lead him by the nose, and the affair will be all the more amusing. But, to be sure, I must catch him first. Well, we shall see directly."
Carl Brandow swung himself from the saddle, fastened his horse's bridle to a tree, and began to ascend the narrow foot-path through the wood to the giant's grave.
CHAPTER IX.
Gotthold had already been working for half an hour with the zeal of an artist who has enthusiastically seized upon his subject, and must take advantage of the present hour, which will not return. Though sky, earth, and sea should adorn themselves at to-morrow's sunset with the same brilliant hues, though the hill should cast the same deep shadows upon the valley and ravines--he would not stand upon the same spot again to replace what had been forgotten, and complete what had been begun.
So he sat upon one of the lower stones of the giant's grave, drinking in, with an artist's glowing eyes, the beauty of the scene and hour, and with an artist's busy hand creating an image of this beauty. The colors on the palette seemed to mingle of their own accord, and every stroke of the brush upon the little square of canvas brought the image nearer its original with a speed and certainty which astonished the artist himself. Never before had any work progressed so rapidly, never had design and execution met so lovingly, never had the enthusiastic feeling of power made him so happy.
"Is it possible the dream that here alone I can reach the standard I am destined to attain may be something more than a dream?" he said to himself, "and is the hidden wisdom of the ancient myth of Antæus to be proved again in me? But to be sure we are all sons of earth; it is not our mother's fault if we struggle toward the distant suns, in whose strange glow our waxen wings quickly melt. I was such an Icarus yonder." "Yes, yes," he exclaimed aloud, "Rome, Naples, Syracuse, you Paradises of artists, what is this poor slip of earth in comparison with you! And yet to me it is more, so much more, it is my home."
"To which an old friend bids you heartily welcome," said a clear voice behind him.