CHAPTER VIII.

The magistrate’s horses did not reach the city gate, from the monastery, more quickly than Ulrich.

As soon as the smith was roused from sleep by the boy’s knock and recognized his voice, he knew what was coming, and silently listened to the lad’s confessions, while he himself hurriedly yet carefully took out his hidden hoard, filled a bag with the most necessary articles, thrust his lightest hammer into his belt, and poured water on the glimmering coals.  Then, locking the door, he sent Ulrich to Hangemarx, with whom he had already settled many things; for Caspar, the juggler, who learned more through his daughters than any other man, had come to him the day before, to tell him that something was being plotted against the Jew.

Adam found the latter still awake and at work.  He was prepared for the danger that threatened him, and ready to fly.  No word of complaint, not even a hasty gesture betrayed the mental anguish of the persecuted man, and the smith’s heart melted, as he heard the doctor rouse his wife and child from their sleep.

The terrified moans of the startled wife, and Ruth’s loud weeping and curious questions, were soon drowned by the lamentations of old Rahel, who wrapped in even more kerchiefs than usual, rushed into the sitting-room, and while lamenting and scolding in a foreign tongue, gathered together everything that lay at hand.  She had dragged a large chest after her, and now threw in candlesticks, jugs, and even the chessmen and Ruth’s old doll with a broken head.

When the third hour after midnight came, the doctor was ready for departure.

Marx’s charcoal sledge, with its little horse, stopped before the door.

This was a strange animal, no larger than a calf, as thin as a goat, and in some places woolly, in others as bare as a scraped poodle.

The smith helped the dumb woman into the sleigh, the doctor put Ruth in her lap, Ulrich consoled the child, who asked him all sorts of questions, but the old woman would not part from the chest, and could scarcely be induced to enter the vehicle.

“You know, across the mountains into the Rhine valley—­no matter where,” Costa whispered to the poacher.

Hangemarx urged on his little horse, and answered, not turning to the Israelite, who had addressed him, but to Adam, who he thought would understand him better than the bookworm:  “It won’t do to go up the ravine, without making any circuit.  The count’s hounds will track us, if they follow.  We’ll go first up the high road by the Lautenhof.  To-morrow will be a fair-day.  People will come early from the villages and tread down the snow, so the dogs will lose the scent.  If it would only snow.”

Before the smithy, the doctor held out his hand to Adam, saying:  “We part here, friend.”

“We’ll go with you, if agreeable to you.”