At the street-door stood the farm-wagon, covered with straw, which was to convey Andreas Hofer to Mantua. Ten soldiers with loaded muskets stood upon it, and a crowd of soldiers surrounded it.
Andreas Hofer walked calmly and with head erect through their ranks to the wagon. His wife had knelt down; she wept and sobbed bitterly, and embraced convulsively her son, who gazed in dismay at his father.
Andreas Hofer had now ascended the wagon. The soldiers stepped back, and the driver whipped up the horses.
Suddenly, Cajetan Doeninger elbowed his way to the wagon, and signed to the driver to stop.
"I shall accompany Hofer," he said, grasping the side-railing of the wagon in order to mount it.
"No, no," cried the jailer, hastening to him. "You are mistaken, you are free."
Doeninger, still clinging to the railing of the wagon, turned to him. "What said the general's order?" he asked.
"It said, 'the young man is free, and can go wherever he pleases.'"
"Well, then," said Doeninger, mounting the wagon, quickly, "the young man will accompany Andreas Hofer to Mantua. Forward, driver, forward!"
The driver whipped up the horses, and the wagon started for Mantua. [Footnote: Donay, the priest who betrayed Andreas Hofer, according to the general belief of the Tyrolese, was soon afterwards appointed imperial chaplain at the chapel of Loretto, by a special decree of the Emperor Napoleon, and received, besides, large donations in lands and money.—See Hormayr's "Andreas Hofer," vol. ii., p. 507.— The peasant Francis Joseph Raffel, who had betrayed Hofer's place of concealment to Donay, was afterward called Judas Iscariot throughout the Tyrol. Every one turned his back upon him with the utmost horror, and the men of the Passeyr valley told him they would shoot him if he did not hang himself within a week. Raffel fled in great dismay to Bavaria, where the government gave him a small office in the revenue department—See "Gallery of Heroes; Andreas Hofer," p. 191.]