im the
general sympathy. Reckoning no doubt upon this incident, to secure the
winning of a cause that he now regarded as his own, the host said to the
hostler: "There is only one way to make a finish. It is to call up the
burgomaster, and beg him to step here. He will decide who is right or
wrong."

"I was just going to propose it to you," said the soldier, "for, after
all, I cannot take the law into my own hands."

"Fritz, run to the burgomaster's!"--and the hustler started in all
haste. His master, fearing to be compromised by the examination of the
soldier, whose papers he had neglected to ask for on his arrival, said
to him: "The burgomaster will be in a very bad humor, to be disturbed so
late. I have no wish to suffer by it, and I must therefore beg you to
go and fetch me your papers, to see if they are in rule. I ought to have
made you show them, when you arrived here in the evening."

"They are upstairs in my knapsack; you shall have them," answered the
soldier--and turning away his head, and putting his hand before his
eyes, as he passed the dead body of Jovial, he went out to rejoin the
sisters.

The Prophet followed him with a glance of triumph, and said to himself:
"There he goes!--without horse, without money, without papers. I could
not do more--for I was forbidden to do more--I was to act with as much
cunning as possible and preserve appearances. Now every one will think
this soldier in the wrong. I can at least answer for it, that he will
not continue his journey for some days--since such great interests
appear to depend on his arrest, and that of the young girls."

A quarter of an hour after this reflection of the brute-tamer, Karl,
Goliath's comrade, left the hiding-place where his master had concealed
him during the evening, and set out for Leipsic, with a letter which
Morok had written in haste, and which Karl, on his arrival, was to put
immediately into the post.

The address of this letter was as follows:

"A Monsieur Rodin, Rue du Milieu-des-Ursins, No, 11, A Paris, France."

CHAPTER XII. THE BURGOMASTER.

Dagobert's anxiety increased every moment. Certain that his horse had
not entered the shed of its own accord, he attributed the event which
had taken place to the spite of the brute-tamer; but he sought in vain
for the motive of this wretch's animosity, and he reflected with dismay,
that his cause, however just, would depend on the good or bad humor of
a judge dragged from his sl