"Because I had got safely back here again."
What strange fascination had this spot of earth for the abandoned creature who had suffered on it nothing but shame and degradation and endless misery? He remembered to have heard of domestic cats who, when the house to which they belong is deserted by its inhabitants, prefer to starve beneath its mouldering roof than to take up their abode elsewhere. And if this cat-like propensity were incurable in her--what then? After all, perhaps it would be cruel at this moment to pass sentence of banishment upon her. She might as well stay till to-morrow morning, so long as she kept out of his way.
"Go," he had commanded, "and don't come near me and my visitors again."
And she had hung her head humbly, and vanished behind the rubbish heap, and there she cowered now, in terror of being discovered.
When Boleslav had finished his story, Engelbert exchanged significant glances with his friends, then said--
"We have brought the requisite tools with us. If you can supply us with the wood, we will knock you up a coffin in a very short time."
"Naturally it won't be a very grand one," remarked Peter Negenthin with a stony smile.
Engelbert looked at him reprovingly. A subdued growl passed from mouth to mouth through the little party, which Boleslav, in his most light-hearted confidence in his friends' good will, did not hear.
"Do you remember," he exclaimed, "that coffin we made for the young Count Dohna in the dark? We took two hours over it, though we couldn't see an inch before our noses."
But his reminiscences met with no response.