He did not stir again.
I did not stop to search in the skin of the moo-calf for the promissory note; I took only time enough to catch up a handful of mud from the street, and fling it into the face of the girl, who was leaning from the window shrieking "Murder!" into the night.
It silenced her for a few moments, and I fled down the street with strides that soon took me a considerable distance from the scene of the tragedy.
In my terror I imagined that a multitude was pursuing me, crying: "Catch him!" "Hold him!" "There goes the assassin!"
I fled through unfamiliar streets and by-ways, across bridges, to the outskirts of the city. There I saw, in an underground den, lights and moving forms; and heard dance-music and riotous shouting. I tore open the entrance-door, dashed down the steps, and fell into the arms of an overgrown rascal, who was clad in the uniform of the Munster guards. The fellow locked his arms about me, and said laughingly:
"You are welcome, comrade! You have come to the proper refuge. You must have been close pressed, I declare! You are puffing like a porpoise! But, have no further fear—you are safe now. Come, sit and have something to drink."
He pressed a goblet of wine into my hand, thrust his arm through mine, and drank smollis with me, by exchanging his bear-skin hat for my cloth barret-cap.
"There, my son, now you are one of us. You have drank our wine, and are now under the command of our worthy captain."
I had stumbled upon a body of recruits for a partisan corps. The company was made up of desperate characters, who were glad enough of this chance to escape prison, or the gallows.
As for myself, I was forced to put a good face on a bad business! Only twelve hours before, I had been a distinguished cavalier, was called Junker Hermann; and had a promissory note for two-thousand thalers in my pocket. Now, I had neither station nor money, and as I had good cause for not wanting to keep the name by which I was known in Hamburg, I gave the recruiting sergeant my own true patronymic.