John looked down.
"I don't know exactly; I think it was on account of some forest affairs. Simon had all kinds of dealings, you know; they never told me anything about it, but I do not believe everything was as it should have been."
"But what did Frederick tell you?"
"Nothing but that we must run away, that they were at our heels. So we ran to Heerse; it was still dark then and we hid behind the big cross in the churchyard until it grew somewhat lighter, because we were afraid of the stone-quarries at Bellerfeld; and after we had been sitting a while we suddenly heard snorting and stamping over us and saw long streaks of fire in the air directly over the church-tower of Heerse. We jumped up and ran straight ahead in the name of God as fast as we could, and, when dawn arose, we were actually on the right road to P." John seemed to shudder at the remembrance even now, and the Baron thought of his departed Kapp and his adventures on the slope of Heerse.
"Remarkable!" he mused; "you were so near each other! But go ahead."
John now related how they had successfully passed through P. and across the border, telling how, from that point, they had begged their way through to Freiburg in Breisgau as itinerant workmen. "I had my haversack with me, and Frederick a little bundle; so they believed us," he went on. In Freiburg they had been induced to enlist in the Austrian army; he had not been wanted, but Frederick had insisted. So he was put with the commissariat. "We stayed over the winter in Freiburg," he continued, "and we got along pretty well; I did, too, because Frederick often advised me and helped me when I did something wrong. In the spring we had to march to Hungary, and in the fall the war with the Turks broke out. I can't repeat very much about it because I was taken prisoner in the very first encounter and from that time was a Turkish slave for twenty-six years!"
"God in Heaven, but that is terrible!" exclaimed Frau von S.
"Bad enough! The Turks consider us Christians no better than dogs; the worst of it was that my strength left me with the hard work; I grew older, too, and was still expected to do as in former years." He was silent for a moment. "Yes," he then said, "it was beyond human strength and human patience, and I was unable to endure it. From there I got on a Dutch vessel."
"But how did you get there?" asked the Baron.
"They fished me out of the Bosphorus," replied John. The Baron looked at him in astonishment and raised his finger in warning; but John continued. "On the vessel I did not fare much better. The scurvy broke out; whoever was not absolutely helpless was compelled to work beyond his strength, and the ship's tow ruled as severely as the Turkish whip. At last," he concluded, "when we arrived in Holland, at Amsterdam, they let me go free because I was useless, and the merchant to whom the ship belonged sympathized with me, too, and wanted to make me his porter. But," he shook his head, "I preferred to beg my way along back here."