[CHAPTER X]
A FRIEND AT COURT
THINGS went on very quietly for some weeks at Carfoos and in its neighbourhood after the events we have just recorded.
Blonda was too glad to get her roll of linen back to trouble herself as to how it had disappeared or how been returned to her. She washed, and ironed, and put it away, quite content that her work had not been wasted, but that she should still get something by the sale of it in the Klingengolf market when her father next paid the town a visit.
Blonda often thought of the young general, and of his goodness to them all, and wondered if the time would ever come when she should need to make use of his sealed paper, and claim his promise of help. Tonie and she had many earnest conversations upon this subject, and he especially was always building upon the small foundation of the general's promise all sorts Of castles in the air.
As for Freskel, Pastor Oshart had so far kept entirely to himself the lad's confidences, seeing no use in telling others, and perhaps setting the whole neighbourhood talking, and exciting the lad afresh just as he was beginning to be reconciled to his loss, and was growing more like the innocent-hearted, boyish Freskel of old. But the pastor had seen but little of him lately, as for some reason the lad had been kept more at home.
Of the Valdens as a family not much was heard now-a-days. Except on that night when Tonie and Blonda had met Dorlat and Hervitz on the ice, no one in the neighbourhood had seen the brothers for some time.
"The Valdens are flying at higher game, I fancy, just now," said Philip Bexal to Grubert one day. "They have been seen with some strangers at a town twenty miles beyond Klingengolf, and I am told they seemed to have plenty of money, and were swaggering about with the bravest. But so long as they come not hither, I care not what they do. One is only thankful to be well quit of them."
But one day, not more than a week later, most astonishing news reached Carfoos. The police at Klingengolf, acting upon special information received, had made a raid upon the Valdens' home, and had arrested, all at once, the old man Jaspar, and his three sons, Dorlat, Hervitz, and Freskel. Rolf Bresser was the bearer of the tidings, for he was on his way from Klingengolf to St. Petersburg on business, and coming to spend a few days at Pastor Oshart's house, he gave him a full account of the capture.
"But for what crime are they arrested?" asked the old pastor.