“SACHTLEBEN GAVE HIM HIS OLD STIFF BAY HORSE.”
And his Serene Highness gave orders to drive to the east over Woldegk; and when they had passed Woldegk and reached Wolfshagen, Jochen Coachman turned around once more on his old horse and said, “Rand, here’s the end again, we can’t go any further.”
And Princess Christel, who had overheard it, said: “Your Grace, this is the first time I have travelled through our estates; I’d never have thought it was such a short way.”
“Christel,” said his Serene Highness, “you’re a woman, and you don’t know much. What do you suppose? There’s a good lot more toward noon. Feldberg and Mirow and Fürstenberg, all that is in my domain, and then beyond Mirow there’s quite a lengthy bit stretching into our neighbour Schwerin’s possessions that makes a good show.”
“Nay, your Highness,” said Rand, who had overheard, “it doesn’t make much of a show, for the sand just pours into a person’s eyes, as I ought to know, for I was born and bred there.”
His Serene Highness very nearly lost his temper at Rand’s foolish twaddle. He leaned far out of the gilt coach, and called out: “Jochen Boenhas, we’ll go home now! And to-morrow we’ll take the Fürstenberg hemlock grove and Mirow.”
And it was done exactly as his Serene Highness had said, for he was a high-spirited prince, and when he had once said, “I say!” then sure enough he had said it.
So the next day they went beyond Fürstenberg to the hemlock grove, and when Rand turned to look into the carriage and say, “Your Grace, here we are at the end again,” then his Serenity looked sinister, and shouted “Wesenbarg!” to console himself; but in spite of Wesenbarg, he came back to Neu-Strelitz in an utterly discontented spirit, and Rand and sister Christel stood in the hall together, shaking their heads and saying, “Where will this end?”
And the evening and the morning were the third day, and his Highness did not reign during that night, for he slept. The bitterns kept silent, and all the ghosts that had of late taken to haunting the palace at Neu-Strelitz had their off-night.