“Ah, that reminds me, Ebearhard; here is the bag we saw last night. I discovered it attached to my belt this morning.”
“He attached it to the wrong belt, then, for you believed him. He should have tied it to mine. What reason does he give for presenting it to you?”
“Ah, now you touch a point of anxiety in my own mind. I have seen nothing of Roland this morning. I surmised that he had arisen before me, and expected to meet him somewhere down the stream, but have not done so.”
“He may have gone farther afield. As you found the bag, he of course, missed it, and probably continued his search.”
“I doubt that, because I came upon a point of view reaching to the Rhine and the hills beyond. I could trace the stream for a considerable distance, and watched it for a long time, but there appeared to be nothing alive in the forest.”
“You don’t suppose he has gone back to Frankfort, do you?”
“I am at loss what to think.”
“If he has abandoned this gang of malcontents, I should be the last to blame him. The way these pigs acted yesterday was disgraceful, ending up their day with rank mutiny and threats of violence. By the iron Cross, Greusel, he has forsaken this misbegotten lot, and it serves them perfectly right, prating about comradeship and carrying themselves like cut-throats. This is Roland’s method of returning our money, for I suppose that bag contains your thirty thalers and my twenty-five.”
“Yes, and his own sixty as well. Poor disappointed devil, generous to the last. It was he who obtained all the money at the beginning, then these drunken swine spend it on wine, and prove so generous and brave that eighteen of them muster courage enough to face one man, and he the man who had bestowed the gold upon them.”
“Greusel, the whole situation fills me with disgust. I propose we leave the lot sleeping there, go to Wiesbaden for breakfast, and then trudge back to Frankfort. It would serve the brutes right.”