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."

"Consider," the other began warningly, but Adam interrupted him, saying:

"I have considered everything; lost is lost. Ulrich, take the doctor's
sack from his shoulder."

For a long time nothing more was said.

The night was clear and cold; the men's footsteps fell noiselessly on the
soft snow, nothing was heard except the creaking of the sledge, and ever
and anon Elizabeth's low moaning, or a louder word in the old woman's
soliloquy. Ruth had fallen asleep on her mother's lap, and was breathing
heavily.

At Lautenhof a narrow path led through the mountains deep into the
forest.

As it grew steeper, the snow became knee-deep, and the men helped the
little horse, which often coughed, tossing its thick head up and down, as
if working a churn. Once, when the poor creature met with a very heavy
fall, Marx pointed to the green woollen scarf on the animal's neck, and
whispered to the smith "Twenty years old, and has the glanders besides."

The little beast nodded slowly and mournfully, as if to say: "Life is
hard; this will