Tonie and Blonda were eating their supper on the third evening after Grubert's departure when Pastor Oshart came in with his bad news, which made the children very down-hearted, for they had been looking forward with gladness to Grubert's return that night, and they grieved too over the suffering which they knew such an accident must cause him.
When the good pastor had answered all the questions that were put to him, so far as it was in his power to do so, Tonie said,—
"Well then, since we are likely to be alone for some time longer, and Master Rolf Bresser is not yet ready to claim his property, were it not wise, dear pastor, for you to take it back to your house? Would it not be safer there than here?"
"Nay, my boy, nay," replied the old man. "One or other of those fellows may well be lurking about my house still. Rolf Bresser is known to have been there more than once, so the money would be supposed to be there too. No, Tonie, since so far there seems no sign of the hiding-place of the bag having been discovered, better let it rest where it is. Where have you put it, my children?"
"Upstairs, under Blonda's bed," replied Tonie.
"Good, then leave it there. And now goodbye. I will try and run over to see you to-morrow, so that, in writing to the father at Klingengolf, I may give him the latest news of his dear ones. Forget not, Tonie, to use all care and diligence in shutting up the house; and once shut, see that thou open the door to none. In this lonely place, even when we look not for danger, it is well to take all possible precautions."
The old pastor trudged off homewards; he would gladly have remained and spent the night with the children at the woodcutter's cottage, for he did not like their being alone, but he knew that his old housekeeper at home would almost no die of fear if he did not return. And he felt now as if the cottage—even though the money was there—was safer from intruders than his own house, since he fondly believed that no one had a suspicion whither the bag had been conveyed.
As for Tonie and Blonda Reuss, they were tired and sleepy, for they had been out nearly all day, so they went to bed early. And by the time the night fairly closed in, they were both sound asleep—Tonie in his slip of a room screened off from the kitchen, and Blonda in her little bed-chamber upstairs.
Tonie had been asleep for about three hours or so when he was roused by a loud knock at the front door of the cottage, the door that faced the forest, from which the house was separated only by the road. Startled, breathless, he sat up in bed, hardly knowing as yet whether he was awake or dreaming. Then came the knock again, and he sprang out of bed, hurried on some clothes, and by a sort of natural instinct was running to open the door, when he remembered the pastor's words, "When the door is once shut, open to none."
"But what if some one should be ill or in trouble, or have lost his way?" said Tonie to himself. "Surely in such case it were cruelty not to open!"