On reaching the Cats' Bridge, which darkly spanned the river, its rivets glittering in the moonlight, the Schrandeners divided, some going to one side of it and the rest keeping to the other. As noiselessly as their half-drunken condition would permit, they slid down the decline in order to screen themselves behind the alders. Those who had firearms, led by the old carpenter, stationed themselves on the edge of the sand-bank, so that they might bring their victim down from the plank bridge, should he by any chance escape the meditated attack from below of pikes, scythes, and flails.
For the space of five minutes there was scarcely a sound audible, beyond the crackling and swishing among the twigs caused by some one stretching out a hand for his bottle of schnaps. Death-like stillness reigned too on the island.
Then the carpenter, whose eyes were momentarily sharpened by brandy, and who was on the alert like a tiger crouching for a spring, discerned a figure emerge and walk slowly and softly on to the Cats' Bridge. It must have been cowering in the boscage above, on the opposite bank, for several minutes.
As the figure came out of the shadow into the full light of the moon, he recognised his daughter. Clearly she had discovered the assassins, and was now on her way to warn the Freiherr of his peril.
"Go back, you vermin!" he cried, all a sportsman's fury at being deprived of his certain prey taking possession of him and clouding his erratic brain.
She ducked her head, but glided forwards, holding on to the hand-rail.
"Back, or I'll aim!"
With one frantic leap she tried to propel herself forwards, but a shot was fired at the same instant, and she sank noiselessly against the rotten balustrade. It snapped in two, and a dark, lifeless mass fell from the heights of the Cats' Bridge into the river. The water rose and fell in sparkling cascades. In the shallow bottom the stones rolled and ground against each other.
Then slowly the whirling, swaying body rose to the surface of the ripples, till the face gazed upwards and was brilliantly illumined by the moon.
A profound stillness reigned on the bank.