Chapter Fourteen.
Mynheer Bunckum’s head butler or steward, a person who was looked upon with great respect on account of the embroidered coat he wore, was passing, shortly after the events narrated in our last chapter, the ruined building in which the Count, unable to release himself, still lay concealed, when a groan reached his ear. Not being a believer in ghosts or goblins, on hearing it he exclaimed, “Oh, oh! that’s a human voice; somebody must have tumbled down the well. Whoever that somebody is, I will get him out; but how that is to be done is the question.” He hunted about till he discovered a hay-rake with a long handle. “This will serve me as a fishing-rod, and I should not
be surprised to find a fish at the end of it.” The steward accordingly went to an opening in the wall just above the well; he plunged down the rake and quickly brought it up without anything at the end. “I must try again,” he said, and he passed it round the wall. “I have got something now,” he exclaimed, and he began to haul away. “A heavy fish at all events,” he cried out. Though a muscular man, as most Frieslanders are, he had a hard job to haul up the rake. At last, stooping down, his hand came in contact with the collar of a man’s coat. He hauled and hauled away; his rake had caught in the hyacinthine locks of Count Funnibos, whose countenance of a cadaverous hue now came in sight.
“Ho, ho!” cried the steward. “Who are you, may I ask?”
The Count was too much exhausted and alarmed to make any answer, and even when the steward set him on his legs, he had to lean against the ivied wall to support himself.
“You are the person, I have a notion, who has been giving us all this trouble,” said the steward, looking the Count in the face. “If so, come along with me, and my master, Mynheer Bunckum, will know what to say to you.”
“I had no intention of giving you or any one else any trouble,” answered the Count, when he at last found words to express himself. “I am much obliged to you for pulling me out of that dreadful hole, and shall be still further obliged if you will brush my clothes, and then conduct me through these grounds so that I may return to my hotel, which I am anxious to reach this evening.”
The steward on hearing this, instead of acceding to the Count’s request, burst into a loud fit of laughter.
“Ho, ho, ho! Very likely indeed,” he answered. “You must come along with me into the presence of Mynheer Bunckum, and he will settle how to dispose of you.”