“Good money is always most needed,” exclaimed the philosophic Gensbein.
He rose and shook himself, then looked down at the beautiful but unimportant rivulet.
“I say, lads, were we as drunk as all that last night? Was there an impassable torrent here or not?”
“How could we be drunk, you fool, on little more than a liter of wine each,” cried Kurzbold.
“Please be more civil in your talk,” returned his friend. “You were drunk all day. The liter and a half was a mere nightcap. If you are certain there was a torrent, then I must have been in the same condition as yourself.”
The spokesman of the previous night, who had been chided for not springing on Roland before he succeeded in doing away with the treasure, here uttered a shout.
“This water,” he said, “is clear as air. You can see every pebble at the bottom. Get to work, you sleepyheads, and search down the stream. We’ll recover that bag yet, and then it’s back to Sonnenberg for breakfast. Whoever finds it, finds it for the guild; a fair and equal division amongst us. That is, amongst the eighteen of us. I propose that Roland, Greusel, and Ebearhard do not share. They were all in the plot to rob us.”
“Agreed!” cried the others, and the treasure-hunt impetuously began.
Greusel and Ebearhard watched them disappear through the forest down the stream.
“Greusel,” said Ebearhard, “what a deplorable passion is the frantic quest for money in these days, especially money that we have not earned. Our excited treasure-hunters do not realize that at such a moment in the early morning the only subject worth consideration is breakfast. Being unsparing and prodigal last night, it would take a small miracle of the fishes to suffice them to-day. There is barely enough for two hungry men, and as we are rid of these chaps for half an hour at least, I propose we sit down to our first meal.”