Had he taken to flight? Had he perished in the flames? The maids had found his bedroom empty, and no trace of himself.
“I suspect no good of him,” said old Douglas, “he was always inclined to madness, and if we find his bones to morrow beneath the ruins I shall be quite convinced that he set fire to the barn himself, and then threw himself into the flames.”
However, just as they were coming through the gates of Helenenthal they heard a dog howling piteously near the barn, and saw a strange cur with his fore paws on a dark mass lying there, and from time to time pulling at something that looked like the end of a garment.
Douglas, surprised, ordered the cart to stop, and walked up to it. There he found the person they were seeking—a corpse. His features were horribly distorted, and his arms still half uplifted, as if he had been suddenly turned to stone. Near him lay a broken pot, and a matchbox was shimming in a pool of petroleum, which as flowing down the wheel ruts as in a gutter.
Then the gray giant folded his hands and murmured a prayer When he came back to the cart he trembled all over, and his eyes were full of tears.
“Elsbeth, look here,” he said, “there lies the body of old Meyerhofer. He wanted to set fire to our property, and God has struck him dead.”
“God does not set barns on fire,” said Elsbeth, and looked back at the burning farm, from which a dark-blue smoke was rising in the chilly morning air.
“But is it not through God’s providence that we were saved?”
“If any one saved us, this one did,” said Elsbeth.
“What? would he have sacrificed everything, would he have become an incendiary—only—to—”