Karl Metzerott was foremost in proclaiming the duty of revenge. In his youth a silent man, and given to much thinking, the years had brought with them a power of rude but vivid eloquence, beneath which his hearers were swayed as the tree-branches bend before the wind.
It was a glorious victory for Karl Metzerott, this triumph of the doctrine of violence; for, though a few faithful ones still clung to Ernest Clare, with the majority his influence was a thing of the past; and Karl rejoiced over his enemy with a mighty joy, careless or unknowing that what these men followed was not “the Emperor,” as they had called him, but the anger and lust for blood and vengeance of their own hearts.
Such an assemblage of lowering brows and sullen, brooding eyes as followed Tina Kellar to the grave had never been seen in Micklegard; the men had nothing to do and nowhere to go; they might as well go to the funeral, they said; and two by two, on foot and silently, they walked after the coffin, through the streets where once Frank Randolph had lured away the dead woman’s sister (though only two of them thought of that), and up the hill to the quiet cemetery where Ernest Clare had taught Ritter Fritz the duties of true knighthood.
There was silence still, while the body was committed to the ground; silence through the dull falling of the first clods and the steady filling-up of the grave; then Paul Kellar cried with a strained, loud, hoarse voice,—
“Men! brothers! I call upon you for vengeance on the murderers of my wife!”
A hoarse murmur of assent, more terrible than words, swept over that sombre crowd; but once again the arms of the pastor were thrown upward, blackly outlined against the brilliant, clear October sky.
“Not for my daughter!” he cried, “no vengeance for her who bears the name of Christ! ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!’”
The crowd dispersed, silently and sullenly; they were not quite ready yet. There was to be a meeting that night, not, however, at Männerchor Hall; that was a victory which even the Emperor had not been able to achieve. This, and the knowledge that Louis, his only son, Louis, to whom he had been both father and mother, that Louis clung to his rival and condemned his father’s course, filled Karl Metzerott’s tongue with fire. His rugged features glowed, his strong frame trembled, as he pictured the rich man’s home, where the cost of one single picture would have been wealth—nay, length of days, to the bowed figure, old beyond her years, whose life slowly ebbed from her, as she toiled through the gorgeous rooms and up and down the wide, richly carpeted stairs.
“We will have revenge, my brothers,” he said; “not now, the time is not yet. We must be stronger first, then we will call Henry Randolph to account, then”—
“Then?” cried a wild, shrill voice, as Paul Kellar leaped upon the platform; “then? I say now! What are they doing now in that gorgeous palace? Repenting of the murder they have done? I tell you they are feasting! Feasting while my wife lies yonder on the hillside, while my children are motherless and my home a desert. The son of the murderer is to marry the daughter of another, of Dare, the great grain-operator, who managed that clever corner in wheat which starved thousands! And they are feasting and making merry!”—His words were lost in a hoarse and terrible roar.