In the morning the people of the inn wake him. Haggard and shivering he looks about him. His glance falls upon the empty bed in which his brother was to have slept. The first bed since six weeks!--Sadly he stands there in front of it and stares at it. Then he has his conveyance brought round and drives off.
This year autumn has come early. Since a week there has been a rough north wind which cuts through one's body as if it were November. Gusts of rain beat against the window-panes and the ground is already covered with a layer of yellowish-brown half-decayed leaves off the lime-trees. And how soon it grows dark! In the bakery a light burns in the swinging lamp long before supper-time. Beneath its globe sits Franz Maas, eagerly reckoning up and counting. On the baker's table before him where as a rule the little white round heaps of dough are ranged, to-day there are little white round heaps of florins, and instead of the crisp "Bretzels" to-day the paper of bank-notes is crackling.
This is the treasure which Martin Rockhammer entrusted to him the Sunday before, with instructions to hand it over to Johannes. He also left a letter in which the various items of the inheritance are set down to a penny.
Every morning since then he has knocked at the door, and each time asked the selfsame question, "Has he been?" Then when Franz Maas shook his head, has silently departed again.
To-day the same. To-day is Friday; today he must come if he wants to be in time for the Bremen ship. Noiselessly he has opened the door and is standing behind him, just as he is about to lock the money away. "I suppose that is all for me," he asks, laying his hand on his shoulder.
"Thank heaven I you have come," cries Franz, agreeably startled. Then he casts a critical glance over his friend's figure. Martin must have been exaggerating when, with tears in his eyes, he described his dilapidated appearance. He looks decent and respectable, is wearing a brand new waterproof, beneath the turned-back flaps of which a neat gray suit is visible. His hair is smoothly brushed--he is even shaved. But of course his dark, dulled gaze, the bagginess under his eyes, the ugly red of his cheeks, are sad witnesses in this face, eretime so youthfully joyous.
And then he grasps both his hands and says:
"Johannes, Johannes, what has come over you?"
"Patience; you shall hear all!" he replies, "I must confide in one living soul, or it will eat my very heart out over there."
"Then you really mean it? You intend--"