The bridge had already been rudely repaired since the departure of the French Army--which had naturally destroyed it ere retiring--and, crazy as the timbers were, he yet managed to lead his horse across it after dismounting. Then, this done, he rode forward smartly to an inn he had noticed on the day of the battle, an inn called the "Goldener Hirsch."
"What is it you seek?" a man asked, coming forward to the door of this house--a place which, at its best, looked as though it could furnish little but the wine grown in the vineyard hard by, and the coarsest of food. A man clad principally in the ordinary costume of a peasant-landlord, yet now wearing on his back a coat richly laced and gallooned, though stained with dark patches here and there. Doubtless, it had been removed from the body of some fallen officer!
"What should a man seek, my friend," asked Andrew, looking down at him from his horse, "but that which most strangers desire at an inn? Rest and food for himself and horse."
"Strangers! mein Gott! we have had enough of strangers here," and his eyes wandered down the filthy, uncleansed and pathless street to where, at the end, the open plain between Entzheim and this village lay. "Enough of strangers! We are fools to live on this frontier-land and be devastated every few years by these infernal wars."
"You seem at least to have benefited by some strangers," remarked Andrew; "did the last one who stayed here pay his reckoning with his laced coat?"
"Nay! An I had fifty such coats, and all that their pockets contained, they would not pay this fellow's and his companion's shot. Look!" and he pointed to a great hole above the doorway. "That's one piece of their work. Done by a cannonball of the Austrians. 'Twill take fifty thalers to repair. His coat's not worth that, all bloodstained as it is and rain-soaked. Also, all my fodder is gone--the French took that!--and my mare was slain by a spent bullet. Curse the strangers--especially when they come fighting here."
"I am not come fighting," Andrew reminded him. "And my question is not yet answered. Can I and my horse rest here and have food? For me no matter what I eat, so it is clean and wholesome."
"I will see," the man replied. "At least you and the beast can rest--if you will pay for it."
"I will pay."
"Dismount then."