EARLY next morning Ludovic and Ompertz set out to inspect the wrecked carriage. They were accompanied by an officer of the Count’s household, having under him two men carrying tools for the repair, if possible, of the broken wheel. He was a man of forbidding aspect, towards whom both the travellers felt an instinctive distrust, nor was the appearance of the two other men any more prepossessing. But there was no time for Ludovic to concern himself with men’s characters as indexed by their faces. With a kingdom and his love hanging on the balance of an hour, the speedy resumption of the journey was all that could be thought of. The storm had passed away; the morning was fresh and fine; scarcely a sign remained of the tempest but its tail of abating wind and scurrying clouds, and, on the ground, the still trickling rain-courses. Seen in the daylight, the castle and its situation seemed yet more extraordinary than by night. Its surroundings were rugged and stern to a degree almost of repulsion; the bluish-black wood, stretching away behind it, formed a suitably mysterious background; while over all was the intense note of lonely, frowning power.
As they went along the valley, with the striking silence only accentuated by the plashing water, the whispered hush of the wind-swept trees, and the occasional cry of a bird, Ludovic tried to get from the Count’s man some idea of his master’s mode of life. But the fellow, without being exactly surly, was not to be drawn, at least on that subject. His replies were significantly curt, and he would persistently change the conversation by a remark on the scene through which they were passing.
It was not long before they neared the place of the previous night’s accident. Ompertz, with a campaigner’s faculty for locality, pointed it out to the head man.
“Our carriage lies just over there in the gorge which meets this at an angle yonder. Our shortest way will be to climb over the bank here, and cut across the high ground.”
He had already sprung some way up the ascent, when the man called him back. “Better keep along the track here,” he said. “The saving in distance is hardly worth the trouble of the climb.”
“But it is nothing,” Ompertz shouted back. “And it takes us directly to the spot. Time counts for much, and——”
“I tell you you will save nothing in time, Captain,” the other insisted, somewhat to Ludovic’s surprise, for Ompertz’s way was easy enough and obviously shorter. “And then there is a steep descent on the other side. Come! Let us not waste time, but keep on by the easier path.”
Almost peremptorily he motioned Ludovic forward. “Come you,” he ordered the two workmen. “I think we know the way best, eh, Lukas?”
“Yes, indeed,” one of the fellows replied, with a rough laugh. “No time for climbing, if his honour is in a hurry.”
Surprised almost into suspicion as he was, Ludovic was too impatient to dispute the matter. “Come, Captain,” he called to Ompertz, “we had better keep down here. We must do as we are bidden, it seems.”