Up he jumped at last and began pacing up and down the room. At last, after much reflection, his mind was made up, he had formed a plan.
"I'll be off. I'll be off immediately. I'll go straight to her. I am determined to learn from her own lips exactly what happened to me and how I came to make such a fool of myself. I will speak to her myself."
And immediately he ordered his coachman to put the horses to; but he told not a living soul whither he was going, even to the coachman he only mentioned the first stage.
At a little booth at the end of the town he bought four and twenty double rolls and a new wooden field flask. When they came to the River Maros, he descended to the water's edge, rinsed out his flask at least twice and then filled it with water, finally thrusting both the rolls and the flask into his travelling knapsack. After that he drew on his mantle, clambered up into the back part of the coach, stuck his pipe in his mouth and his pistol in his fist and never closed an eye till morning.
And it must be admitted that Mr. Gerzson's mode of travelling on this occasion was decidedly eccentric. On reaching a village he would tell his coachman where to go next but he never told him more than one stage in advance. Every morning he would consume one of his rolls and wash it down with the lukewarm brackish water of the Maros—and bitter enough he found the taste of it too. He never quitted the carriage for more than two or three minutes at a time, and he presented his pistols point blank at everyone who approached him with inquisitive questions.
Only twice during the night did he allow the horses an hour or two of rest—and then away over stock and stone again.
The coachman, who was unaccustomed to such queer ways, presently shook his head every time he received orders to go on further, but by dawn of day he had had about enough of the job.
"Your honour," said he, "are we going to stop at all? It would do the horses no harm if they had a little rest."
"What's that to you, you rascal, eh?" roared Mr. Gerzson, "I suppose you're sleepy, you lazy good-for-nothing? Off the box then, you hound, you! I'll drive the horses myself, you gallows-bird!"
The old fellow, who had been in the service of the family for twenty years and had never had so many insulting epithets thrown at his head before explained that he did not speak for himself but for the horses.