"What do you say, Miller Voss?" asked the Herr Rathsherr.
"I say nothing, Herr Rathsherr," said the Miller, turning towards him a face so full of wrinkles that it looked like a puckered tobacco-pouch rising above his shoulder, "I say nothing; I only think: yesterday when I was driving towards Brandenburg I didn't feel exactly comfortable, and now to-day, when I am driving away from it, I feel as if I had got a stomach-ache in my head."
"How's that?" asked my uncle Herse; and the Miller told him his difficulties with Itzig.--"Hm!" said my uncle, and he passed his hand slowly down his face as far as his chin where it remained fast caught in the stubbly beard. With his chin in his hand and his mouth wide open, he gazed fixedly for a while into vacancy. He tried the same thing over again once or twice, but his hand never got over his beard. Now, though my uncle Herse had a bristly beard, he had a tender soul; and if his mouth opened wide, his heart opened wider still; and, as he was taking a last look into the grey sky, his eyes fell on a blue place, and a ray from the blue sky passed through his eyes into his open heart. He must do a good work.
"Baker Witte," said he, "let the Miller come and sit here, and you take his place on the front seat,--I have something to say to him."
This was done, and Baker Witte talked on the front seat to the valet-de-chambre in a very loud voice, and the Herr Rathsherr talked on the hind seat with the Miller in a very low one.
"Miller Voss," said my uncle, "I will help you out of the bog. I will send for Itzig to-morrow--and then observe how servile he will be, for I know something about him,--a secret!--that does not concern anybody else;--but it's nothing very good you may be sure.--The fellow shall give you time till Easter, and I will be surety for you; and I'll come out to-morrow, and look through all your papers and take the matter into my own hands. For, look here," and as he spoke he drew out the seal at the end of his watch-chain, "I am appointed to do such things. Here it stands. Perhaps you can't easily read Latin backwards?" The Miller said he could not read it either backwards or forwards.--"Well, it does not matter. Here it stands: Not. Pub. Im. Cæs., that's to say, I'm Notarius Publicus, and Im. Cæs. means--I can be consulted in every lawsuit. So, Miller, I'll help you.--But upon one condition only: that you tell no one of my being surety for you, or of our agreement,--above all not the Herr Amtshauptmann. The affair must remain a profound secret."
The Miller promised.
In one way things were going on in the second waggon in the same manner as in the first. On the front sack the voices were very loud, and on the hind sack, on which Heinrich and Fieka were sitting, they were very low. I need not tell what they were saying to each other, for Friedrich, you know, was lying close behind them in the straw, and heard every word they said, and he will come out with it in good time.
About three hours after this, that young rascal Fritz Sahlmann was running through the streets of the good town of Stemhagen, shouting--"They are coming! They are coming!"--He had been watching for a couple of hours on the Windmill-hill, and, during that time, the Herr Amtshauptmann had rung his bell seven times for him, and had, at last, come down to my mother out of sheer vexation.
"They are coming!" cried the young wretch.