The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse. The brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.
He sprang forward quickly, seized the horse’s rein, and unfastened the harness. The sledge stopped, but its masters slept on.
He stood before them staring down upon them. The hand that held his pistol trembled violently.
“What shall I do with them now?” he murmured. “I can’t kill them in their sleep. They must be drunk as well, otherwise they would have woke up long ago. The best way would be to let them go and wait for the next time.”
He was just going to harness the horse again when it darted into his mind that he had sworn to his mother he would kill them.
“I knew very well that I was a miserable coward,” he thought to himself, “and should never have the courage for it. I am not even good enough to commit murder.”
“But I will do it yet,” he murmured, stepped back a few paces, and aimed direct at Ulrich’s breast; but he did not pull the trigger, for he inwardly feared he might hurt the sleeping man.
“Shall I do it all the same?” he thought, when he had stood for some while in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what would happen when he had done it and both were lying dead before him. “Either I must shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters behind me in misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself tip to justice to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as great.”
“It is madness, in any case”—so he ended his reflections—“but I shall do it all the same.”
And suddenly he saw under Ulrich’s fur, which had been a little turned back from his breast, a sparkling array of tinsel stars, such as ladies fasten onto gentlemen’s coats in the cotillon.