Mounting a small elevation to the west of the village, he signaled to the patient men to come on, which they lost no time in doing.  The bread was eaten and the wine drunk without a word being said by any one.  And now they took their way down the hill again, crossed the little Geisenheim stream, and up once more, traversing a high table-land giving them a view of the Rhine, finally descending through another valley, which led them into Assmannshausen, celebrated for its red wine, a color they had not yet met with.

Assmannshausen proved to be a city as compared with the hamlets they had passed, yet was small enough to make a thorough search of the place a matter that consumed neither much effort nor time.  Greusel led his men to a Weinstaube a short distance out of the village, and, to their delight, succeeded in establishing a credit for them to the extent of one liter of wine each, with a substantial meal of meat, eggs, and what-not.  Greusel and Ebearhard left them there in the height of great enjoyment, all the more delightful after the hunger and fatigue they had encountered, for the three and a half leagues had proved almost without a single stretch of level land.  The two officers inquired for Roland, without success, at the various houses of entertainment which Assmannshausen boasted, then canvassed every home in the village, but no one had seen anything of the man they described.

Coming out to the river front, deeply discouraged, the two gazed across the empty water, from which all enlivening traffic had departed.  It was now evident to both that Roland had not entered Assmannshausen, for in so small and gossipy a hamlet no stranger could even have passed through without being observed.

“Well, Joseph,” asked Ebearhard, “what do you intend to do?”

“There is nothing to do but to wait until our money is gone.  It is absolutely certain that Roland is not here.  Can it be possible that after all he returned?”

“How could he have done so?  We know him to have been without money; therefore why to Frankfort, even if such a trip were possible for a penniless man?”

“I am sorry now,” said Greusel despondently, “that I did not follow a suggestion that occurred to me, which was to take the men direct down the valley where we encamped, to the banks of the Rhine, and there make inquiries.”

“You think he went that way?”

“I did, until you persuaded me out of it.”

“Again I ask what could be his object?”

“It seems to me that this mutiny made a greater impression on his mind than I had supposed.  After all, he is not one of us, and never has been.  You yourself pointed that out when we were talking of him at Breckenheim.  If you caught glances of contempt for us while we were all one jolly family in the Kaiser cellar, what must be his loathing for the guild after such a day as yesterday?”

“That’s true.  You must travel with a man before you learn his real character.”