When the third hour after midnight came, the doctor was ready for departure.
Marx’s charcoal sledge, with its little horse, stopped before the door.
This was a strange animal, no larger than a calf, as thin as a goat, and in some places woolly, in others as bare as a scraped poodle.
The smith helped the dumb woman into the sleigh, the doctor put Ruth in her lap, Ulrich consoled the child, who asked him all sorts of questions, but the old woman would not part from the chest, and could scarcely be induced to enter the vehicle.
“You know, across the mountains into the Rhine valley—no matter where,” Costa whispered to the poacher.
Hangemarx urged on his little horse, and answered, not turning to the Israelite, who had addressed him, but to Adam, who he thought would understand him better than the bookworm: “It won’t do to go up the ravine, without making any circuit. The count’s hounds will track us, if they follow. We’ll go first up the high road by the Lautenhof. To-morrow will be a fair-day. People will come early from the villages and tread down the snow, so the dogs will lose the scent. If it would only snow.”
Before the smithy, the doctor held out his hand to Adam, saying: “We part here, friend.”
“We’ll go with you, if agreeable to you.”
“Consider,” the other began warningly, but Adam interrupted him, saying:
“I have considered everything; lost is lost. Ulrich, take the doctor’s sack from his shoulder.”