went through Dresden he would take out the passport at the chancery, and begged to be allowed to go on, this time, as he had known nothing whatever about this requirement.  “Well!” said the Squire, as the storm at that moment began to rage again and the wind blustered about his scrawny legs; “let the wretch go.  Come!” he added to the young knights, and, turning around, started toward the door.  The castellan, facing about toward the Squire, said that Kohlhaas must at least leave behind some pledge as security that he would obtain the passport.  The Squire stopped again under the castle gate.  Kohlhaas asked how much security for the black horses in money or in articles of value he would be expected to leave.  The steward muttered in his beard that he might just as well leave the blacks themselves.

“To be sure,” said the castellan; “that is the best plan; as soon as he has taken out the passport he can come and get them again at any time.”  Kohlhaas, amazed at such a shameless demand, told the Squire, who was holding the skirts of his doublet about him for warmth, that what he wanted to do was to sell the blacks; but as a gust of wind just then blew a torrent of rain and hail through the gate, the Squire, in order to put an end to the matter, called out, “If he won’t give up the horses, throw him back again over the toll-bar;” and with that he went off.

The horse-dealer, who saw clearly that on this occasion he would have to yield to superior force, made up his mind to comply with the demand, since there really was no other way out of it.  He unhitched the black horses and led them into a stable which the castellan pointed out to him.  He left a groom in charge of them, provided him with money, warned him to take good care of the horses until he came back, and with the rest of the string continued his journey to Leipzig, where he purposed to go to the fair.  As he rode along he wondered, in half uncertainty, whether after all such a law might not have been passed in Saxony for the protection of the newly started industry of horse-raising.

On his arrival in Dresden, where, in one of the suburbs of the city, he owned a house and stable—­this being the headquarters from which he usually conducted his business at the smaller fairs around the country—­he went immediately to the chancery.  And here he learned from the councilors, some of whom he knew, that indeed, as his first instinct had already told him, the story of the passport was only made up.  At Kohlhaas’s request, the annoyed councilors gave him a written certificate of its baselessness, and the horse-dealer smiled at the lean Squire’s joke, although he did not quite see what purpose he could have had in view.  A few weeks later, having sold to his satisfaction the string of horses he had with him, Kohlhaas returned to Tronka Castle harboring no other resentment save that caused by the general misery of the world.