"Stop!" cried Boleslav, feeling as if more would kill him. "Your desire is fulfilled. I now wish it as earnestly as you do. Of a truth I should deserve my disgrace, were I ever to ask another favour of you.... I will not even insult you by saying 'Many thanks' for the service you have just rendered me. May God reward you, and may He forgive you for having put me in my present position; rather would I have thrown the corpse into the river and myself after it; let us say no more. Perhaps you will allow me to assist in putting the horses in, as there is nothing else I can do for you?"
"I am sorry," Engelbert said, his voice quivering with emotion; "it pains us deeply. We are as fond of you yourself as we have ever been--but, you see----"
"I see all, dear Engelbert; no excuses are necessary."
The horses were put in. All were in readiness to start. Staring vacantly before him, Boleslav leant against the wall. Engelbert turned and took a last look at him from the box-seat.
"And don't forget Regina!" he said. "That is to say, if she escapes with her life. It is to her, not to us, you are indebted."
"Very well," answered Boleslav, not taking in the meaning of what had been said to him.
The drivers cracked their whips; in another moment the heavy wheels had thundered over the loose flooring of the drawbridge. Like silver-girt phantoms the coaches disappeared in the misty moonlight.
He was alone--more alone than any outcast in God's wide world. What should he do?
He began wearily to drag his footsteps up the incline. The brambles that tangled the ground wound round his ankles. A firefly made a zigzag thread of flame in front of him. From the top of the hill the great, weird, dark masses of the Castle ruins looked down on him, as if threatening to fall on him and bury him beneath their debris. Through the yawning window-casements the moon shone, giving them the appearance of huge ghostly eyes. He roamed absently past the towers, a sudden exhaustion weighing like lead upon his limbs. If only he could fall asleep and never wake again.
He tried to remember what it was his friend had called out to him from the coach at parting. He racked and racked his brains, but his memory failed him.