Several freight-wagons with armed escorts, and a few peasants, with rosaries in their hands, who were on their way to church, met the lad, but no one had overtaken him.
On the hinge of noon he heard behind him the tramp of horses’ hoofs and the rattle of wheels, approaching nearer and nearer with ominous haste.
If it should be the troopers!
Ulrich’s heart stood still, and turning to look back, he saw several horsemen, who were trotting past a spur of the hill around which the road wound.
Through the falling flakes the boy perceived glittering weapons, gay doublets and scarfs, and now—now—all hope was over, they wore Count Frohlinger’s colors!
Unless the earth should open before him, there was no escape. The road belonged to the horsemen; on the right lay a wide, snow-covered plain, on the left rose a cliff, kept from falling on the side towards the highway by a rude wall. It needed this support less on account of the road, than for the sake of a graveyard, for which the citizens of the neighboring borough used the gentle slope of the mountain.
The graves, the bare elder-bushes and bushy cypresses in the cemetery were covered with snow, and the brighter the white covering that rested on every surrounding object, the stronger was the relief in which the black crosses stood forth against it.
A small chapel in the rear of the graveyard caught Ulrich’s eye. If it was possible to climb the wall, he might hide behind it. The horsemen were already close at his heels, when he summoned all his remaining strength, rushed to a stone projecting from the wall, and began to clamber up.
The day before it would have been a small matter for him to reach the cemetery; but now the exhausted boy only dragged himself upward, to slip on the smooth stones and lose the hold, that the dry, snow-covered plants growing in the wide crevices treacherously offered him.
The horsemen had noticed him, and a young man-at-arms exclaimed: “A runaway! See how the young vagabond acts. I’ll seize him.”