Early the following morning Langler and I had pretty sharp difference of opinion at my bedside. I said to him: "Dees' own view of what is good for himself is naturally worth more than yours or mine: a file is what he says that he wants, and I believe that we can still get it to him if we act now before the boat is found."

"The boat may have already been found," said Langler.

"Possibly," said I; "but no doubt the rumour will take some time to get into the castle, so that if we act boldly at once, taking the ladder here, we may get the file to Dees."

"But we have no file," said he.

"That is the least of it, surely," I answered: "Lossow has a big box of tools; we can take a file."

"No, frankly, Arthur, it would not be quite to my taste," said he.

"What would not, Aubrey?"

"This of the file: does it seem quite pretty and correct to allow ourselves to become the abettors of any person in breaking open another man's house?"

I was silent: it was painful to me to believe that Langler could be serious. "But in this case," said I, "the other man's house happens to be a house in which the person is lawlessly imprisoned. Or is that not so?"

"True," said he; "but still, isn't it very well said that two wrongs do not make a right? If you look at it with a certain sidelong criticism and detachment, I fancy that you will just see that it would not be quite decorous and becoming. No, it would not be decorous, and, moreover, it is not in the scheme. We have now actually seen Dees in prison, so the proper authorities can no longer refuse to act, and upon them we must now cast the burden."

"But the authorities can refuse to act," said I, "for Baron KolÁr, remember, is no mere nobleman, but a political somebody, and the authorities, if they do act, may take weeks, or 'months or years,' as Dees said. True, the authorities are what we originally proposed: but we did not then contemplate that time would be the question, that Baron KolÁr might be here at home, or might have any purpose against the life of this poor man—'crucify,' by the way, is the word which Dees used: open your mind to it, Aubrey."

"Well, but to me there is something fantastic in the mere word," said he: "Dees' mind may be unhinged."

"Not in the least, I believe," I answered. "Are crucifixions so very unfamiliar to you? I say that if some circumstance or other once led Baron KolÁr to vow that this thing shall be done, then it will be done, unless we act now out of the rut of ourselves, on a plane higher than our everyday height. It is hard to do, of course, but perhaps we can screw ourselves up to it. Let us think of Dees' agony of waiting for the file to-night, to-morrow night, every night; and I promised him, I said, 'we sha'n't fail you, trust in us, we shall stick to you to our last breath.' No, we can't fail him."

"But you speak as though I proposed to fail him, Arthur!" said Langler.

"No, you don't, of course, propose that," said I, "but still, we can't let some qualm of primness or respectability in us cause the man to curse Heaven: he should have the file; I know that Emily would agree with me——"

"Emily? No! Emily would hardly say, I think, that the principles of conduct should be modified by pressing circumstances."

"But did not David eat of the shewbread in pressing circumstances?" said I: "I am convinced that Emily would agree with me, if I know her."

"No, nego, nego."

"Well, we won't dispute that," said I; "but still, let us think of Dees waiting, despairing, conscious perhaps that Baron KolÁr is in the castle, with God knows what ghastly meaning. And to move the authorities will take time, even if they be willing; and who can say what may happen meanwhile to Max Dees?"

"Then I shall know how to act this very day," said he, "neither approaching the authorities nor giving Dees the file, but in another vigorous, yet law-abiding, fashion."

"Which fashion, Aubrey?"

"I shall rouse the alp," said he, "I shall implant into each mind the certainty of Dees' imprisonment, I shall ignite their indignation, and lead them all to demand his release."

For some time I made no answer to this; then I said: "well, do so; and, if the human swineherds on this alp were theories, you might just possibly succeed: remember, however, that, in the event of your failure, it will be too late then to take the file, for the news of the boat and ladder will certainly by that time have reached the castle, and Dees will thenceforth be strictly guarded, or removed to another dungeon."

"Well, but I won't fail," said he—"at least let us hope that I won't fail, Arthur; one can but try one's purblind best, and it may perhaps be that time and tide will happen to him."

"Yes, I see how you feel, I see," said I; "but you know the awe, and even affection, which all these people here cherish for the baron: how, then, can you expect to 'lead' them against him? If you do manage it, the baron will send Herr Court-painter to stare them away with his spectacles——"

"No, I think that you underestimate the good people," he answered: "though indolent in the presence of a suspected wrong, they will not be slow to rise against a proved wrong. Do let us have some little trust in our kind."

I felt myself, as it were, caught in the toils with this sudden scheme of Langler's, seeing quite clearly, as I did, that no good would come of it, but the more I argued the more I seemed to fix him in it, till at last it almost looked as if a crick of contradiction to me had entered into his motive. I saw, indeed, his point of view: to approach the authorities might be fatally slow, to give Dees the file was "improper"—a touch of bigotry perhaps being added to this latter view by my unlucky claim that his sister would believe it proper, for he was touchy as to her judgments, and inflexible whenever the moral, or even the proper, was at all involved; but still, his way out of the fix appeared to me too wild. At one moment I even had the thought of taking the file to Dees without him, but I saw that I should probably fail single-handed; and, moreover, he was the head in this matter: to his house, not to mine, Max Dees' wren had come, and I had merely accompanied his undertaking.

Well, what happened that day is tedious to me to tell, and shall be told shortly: first, I saw Langler in head-to-head talk with Lossow, our host, who, though very friendly with us, had never yet let one word of Dees' history escape his lips; then after all the talk, the head-noddings, the finger-countings, I saw Langler giving money—a good mass of it, too—and I thought to myself: "what, has it become a question already of bribing the 'good people'? the disillusionment will grow!" Lossow then wrote out a list of names, which Langler conned, and near eleven in the morning they two rode out together. I offered to be with them: but it was felt that my heart was hardly in the business, and I was left out of it behind.

At one o'clock Lossow came back alone, and hurried to me, mopping his bald head, where I sat at the foot of a tree. This old man always seemed by some movement of the mouth to be trying to keep back a smile, but without success; he was stout and chubby, his arms hung from his stooped shoulders with a certain paralysed look, and he stepped short like a woman. "Kiss the hand!" he said, beaming, "all goes well, we have ridden like blackriders, and canvassed the folk. Herr Somebody will not only come, but will bring his two sons and his three day-labourers, and by three o'clock you will see gathered here the bravest swarm of them." "That should mean good trade in the beer for you, Lossow," said I. "The beer? good trade? for me?" said he, taken aback, "well, no doubt, folks must drink after all, folks must drink, what would you have? There's Karl and Jakub So-and-so have already struck work, and mean to make a day of it—it is the richest affair this day! You'll see them come gaping here like fish presently, the blessed swarm of them!" "But why gaping?" said I, "hasn't Herr Langler explained why they are to come?" "Ach, not to all," he answered, "for I whispered to Herr Langlaire, 'hasten with leisure,' 'many heads, many minds'; they of these parts are a curious lot, you know, oh, a curious lot, you wouldn't understand them even after many years, for one must be born among them." "On the contrary, Lossow," said I, "I understand you through and through: you mean that, if Herr Langler had told them everything, they would have been afraid to show their noses, and the rich affair would have been spoiled." "Ah, you are a rogue!" said he, "well, between us, it was something like that: what would you have? one is nearer to himself than to his neighbour. After all, these bauers and landsasses here are a mean-spirited swarm, what can you expect? As for me, if I had been they, I should have demanded the release of the Pater Dees long ago, yes, I!—if I had been they. Still, some of them have been told all, and there's Herr Somebody coming with his two sons, Wolfgang and Ernst——" "Who is this Herr Somebody?" I asked. "What," said he, "not know Herr Somebody yet? the Mittel-frei? with fifty acres of beet on the yon side of the Schwannsee? Between us, he keeps a little grudge against the baron, and is all for a lark, with a carouse to follow"——in this way he kept on gossiping, trying not to smile, but smiling, and full of the heyday. Langler, it appeared, was still "canvassing the folk," had five cottages more to visit, but would be back for dinner, which Lossow at last hurried off to see to.

Langler, returning near two, threw himself upon our sofa with a sad sigh, saying: "well, so far, so good; but the boat has been recovered, Arthur; all is known, and your things and my hat, with the ladder, have been taken to the castle. Perhaps some of them will shrink from coming to the rendezvous now." He sighed again.

"As to the boat," said I, "that I quite expected: it is calamitous, but I expected it. But as to the rendezvous, I doubted that you would still adhere, Aubrey, to this strange action upon which you have embarked."

"But you speak of it, Arthur, as strange! Is it not as natural as the unfolding of a flower to appeal to one's human fellows in a case where humanity has been outraged? True, these people are not quite gilt with perfection—ah, no! one must admit that; but their rudeness is the plainness of honesty, they are robust and good, and, after all, I have had more success with them than I could have hoped."

"But you have not told them for what purpose you want them to come."

"No, not told it to all, not yet."

"And when you do tell them, do you imagine that they will march to the castle?"

"Yes, they will rise, they will act: men are not sheep after all."

"But suppose they rise, and act, and march, what then? Will they tear the castle down like the Bastille?"

"No, certainly, not that: but truth alone is huge, surely; justice by itself is the shout of a host. We shall see how it turns out. One after all can only steer by one's best chart, Arthur, casting one's cause upon the immortal gods, not without hope. But here is Lossow come to call us to dinner."

In peeped a face trying not to smile, but smiling, and we went down to dinner in the old kitchen, soon after which I began to note the shy arrival of Hans and Klaus, one by one, two by two, who all slunk into the beer-room on the left of the porch, and I heard later on (though not from Langler) that drink was free that day. Meantime Langler was pacing our sitting-room with a strenuous brow, preparing, I think, a speech.

Down below grew a noise of tongues, and soon after three o'clock in looked Lossow busily, giving out the whisper: "they are all in the beer-garden waiting!" this beer-garden being a yard with tables, swings, etc., behind the house, which was L-shaped. Upon this Langler paced yet twice, took up hat and thorn-stick, and said quietly to me: "well, then, let us go."

Below we stood under the verandah, and with us were Lossow, Frau Lossow, their four daughters, and two servants; before us in the garden a mob of some fifty, with a few women and infants, earth-born beings, one of whom bore a broomstick with a rag for flag: this was Herr Somebody!—I think the name was Voss or Huss—a sloven, red rascal like a satyr. Some few gaped silent, "like fishes," but it was evident to me that the mind of the meeting was waggish; and Langler, standing against the verandah-rail, addressed them.

He was palish, but then his brow reddened, and, on the whole, I was surprised how well he spoke, since German was strange to his tongue; he kept putting his palms to the rail and catching them up again, and bowing forward and up again, and I felt how very foreign, very trying and hard, to him all this must be; but he became earnest, speaking feelingly, and I could have cried to see him spending his soul upon that herd, appealing to them as brothers where no brotherhood was, giving them news of justice and of compassion and of passionate intrepidity, where only pigs and mugs were understood. Several times he was stopped by the ribald Herr Voss or Huss waving the broomstick, and whooping some such cry as "on to the burg, you clowns! let's souse old Tschudi in the river-water!"

"Well, now," said Langler, "let us go: all of us together: with the fixed purpose not to leave the castle without bringing back our poor prisoner with us. We will carry no weapon in our hands, no, yet we shall be great in power. Let us go; and I shall go in front, and my friend here, too, will come, to strengthen us."

I think that he was about to say more: but just now, on a sudden, behold Herr Castle-governor Tschudi in his smoking-cap standing with us. I first heard a guffaw behind me, then at once the man was beside Langler at the verandah-rail, and at once he was crying out jokes to this or the other of the crowd, cutting Langler short, asking one how his horrid old swell-foot was, assuring another that his old woman was at that very moment making a cuckold of him, egging on another to go at once to the castle to rescue the saintly and grateful Pater Dees; and the throng was roaring with laughter when, all at once, the man's face took on a look of ire that strongly reminded one of his over-lord, and he ordered them all instantly to be gone to their abodes.

Langler made not one other effort, for he was not one to strive and cry, and the power over the mob of the coarse-grained man beside him was so obvious. As the crowd began to flow away my friend turned to me, and smiled.

The last I saw of our army was Voss or Huss marching loudly away, broomstick held aloft, against the burg, in the midst of a crew of some eight or ten.

As these disappeared, Herr Tschudi tapped me on the arm.

"Sirs," said he, "kiss the hand: will you have the goodness to step this way with me?"

We followed him into a room opening upon the verandah.

"Those articles yours, sirs?" said he, pointing to a chair on which lay our rope-ladder together with my jacket, waistcoat, and cap, and Langler's hat, left in the boat.

"Yes," said I, "they are ours."

"Well, I have brought them for you," said he; "but I have now to suggest to you, sirs, that you leave the alp before noon to-morrow."

"Is it a threat?" cried I, starting.

The man made me no answer, but laying his hand upon Langler's arm, said to him: "don't take it as a threat; I suggest it to you in a friendly way: listen to me. You have shot a buck (made a blunder) in coming here, and you will spin no silk by remaining longer. You have been strangely lucky so far, owing to the fact that your intentions are amiable; but you know nothing, you are groping in the dark on the brink of a precipice. You go away now."

"Well, your advice seems to be kindly meant," said Langler, "and we thank you. But there is no chance of its influencing us at all, Herr Tschudi."

"Then I leave it to you," said Tschudi, "God guard," and he strode away.

We two then went up to our sitting-room, where we spent the evening and most of that night. Little was said between us. Langler was not well, and complained of a pain in the heart. He was, indeed, very deeply hurt, and said to me with a meekness that made my heart ache: "I shall never again act against your judgment, Arthur, in such a matter. Oh, I thought men nobler, and the gods less niggard." It was useless to go to bed, for I never heard such a racket, the wind was rough, and the crew of peasants, who had gone away only for a time, were below, since drink already reckoned for was to be had that night. Till quite into the morning their music, quarrelling, and roars of merriment rose up to us through the roaring of the tempest in the forest—hour after hour—so that I pitied Langler, who, I knew, must be feeling that the money which he had laid out with fond hopes of good was working harm. Between the noises he and I deliberated as to what was now to be done by us; but there was nearly nothing to be said, since nothing remained but to address ourselves to the law of the land. I wanted him to come, too, with me to Gratz, but he said, what was true, that it was useless for us both to go; he was weary and disillusioned, and perhaps Herr Tschudi's command to go had something to do with his will to stay, but I was unwilling to leave him, and begged him to go down at least to Speisendorf or BadsÖgl; but no, he would stay where he was. At last the noises died down, and some time after two we went to bed.