I sent forward a messenger from our last halting-place to give tidings of our coming; and when, hard by Schweinau, behold a cloud of dust, our eyes met and told more than many and eloquent words.

Great and pure and thankful joy filled and bore up my soul; but presently the cloud of dust was hid by a turn in the road behind the trees, and even so, quoth my fearful heart, the shroud of the future hid what next might befall us.

The cruel blows of fate which had fallen on Herdegen had not been all in vain, and the growing weakness of his frame warned him not to spend his strength and eagerness on new and ever new things.  Yet what troubled me was that he was not aware of the changes that had come upon him within and without.  From all his speech with me I perceived that, even now, he might not conceive that life could be other than as he desired:  notwithstanding it gave me secret joy to look upon this dear fellow, for whom life should have had no summer heats nor winter frosts, but only blossoming spring-tide and happy autumn days.

But now we had got round the wood, and we might see what the cloud of dust had concealed.  Foremost there came a train of waggons loaded with merchandise and faring southwards, and the first waggon had met a piled-up load of charcoal coming forth from the forest at a place in the road where they were pent between a deep ditch on one hand and thick brushwood and undergrowth on the other; thus neither could turn aside, and their wheels were so fast locked that they barred the road as it had been a wall.  Thus the second waggon likewise had come to hurt by the sudden stopping of the first, and it was but hardly saved from turning over into the ditch.  There was a scene of wild turmoil.  The waggons stopped the way, and neither could the rest of the train, nor their armed outriders, nor our own folks come past, by reason that the ditch was full deep and the underwood thick.  We likewise were compelled to draw rein and look on while the six fine waggon horses which had but just come from the stable, their brown coats shining like mirrors, were unharnessed, and likewise the draughtoxen were taken out of the charcoal-waggon; which was done with much noise and cursing, and the brass plates that decked the leathern harness of the big horses jingling so loud and clear that we might not hear the cries of our kinsfolks.  Nay, it was the plume in Gotz’s hat, towering above the throng, which showed us that they were come.

Now, while Herdegen was vainly urging and spurring his unwilling horse to leap down into the ditch and get round this fortress of waggons, two of the others—­and I instantly saw that they were Ann and her father, on horseback—­had made their way close to the charcoal waggon; howbeit, they could get no further by reason that it had lurched half over and strewed the way with black charcoal-sacks.