“I would rather have gone alone with you,” replied the new leader, “for I have condemned myself to wear this heavy cloak, which is all very well to sleep in, but burdensome under a hot sun.”
“The sun won’t be so oppressive,” predicted his friend, “while we keep to the forest.”
“That is very true, but remember we are somewhere in the Rheingau, and that we must come out into the vineyards by and by.”
“Don’t grumble, Greusel, but hold up your head as a great diplomatist. Roland himself could not have managed these chaps so well, you flaunting hypocrite, the only capitalist amongst us, yet talking as if you were a monk sworn to eternal poverty.”
Greusel changed the subject.
“Do you notice,” he said, “that we are following some sort of path, which we must have trodden last evening, without seeing it in the dusk.”
“I imagine,” said Ebearhard, “that Roland knew very well where he was going. He strode along ahead of us as if sure of his ground. I don’t doubt but this will lead us to Assmannshausen.”
Which, it may be remarked, it did not. The path was little more than a trail, which a sharp-eyed man might follow, and it led up-hill and down dale direct to the Archbishop’s Castle of Ehrenfels.
The forest lasted for a distance that the men in front estimated to be about two leagues, then they emerged into open country, and saw the welcome vines growing. Climbing out of the valley, they observed to the right, near the top of a hill, a small hamlet, which had the effect of instantaneously raising the spirits of the woebegone company.
“Hooray for breakfast!” they shouted, and had it not been for their own fatigue, and the steepness of the hill, they would have broken into a run.