Prince Otto | Page 5

days to get home. No, it's
begun again; it's as it was three years ago, before he married; a disgrace!
Hereditary prince, hereditary fool! There goes the government over the
borders on a grey mare. What's that? No, nothing - no, I tell you, on my
word, I set more store by a good gelding or an English dog. That for
your Otto!'
'He's not my Otto,' growled Kuno.
'Then I don't know whose he is,' was the retort.
'You would put your hand in the fire for him to-morrow,' said Kuno,
facing round.
'Me!' cried the huntsman. 'I would see him hanged! I'm a Grunewald
patriot - enrolled, and have my medal, too; and I would help a prince!
I'm for liberty and Gondremark.'
'Well, it's all one,' said Kuno. 'If anybody said what you said, you
would have his blood, and you know it.'
'You have him on the brain,' retorted his companion. 'There he goes!' he
cried, the next moment.
And sure enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white
horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among
the trees on the farther side.
'In ten minutes he'll be over the border into Gerolstein,' said Kuno. 'It's
past cure.'
'Well, if he founders that mare, I'll never forgive him,' added the other,
gathering his reins.
And as they turned down from the knoll to rejoin their comrades, the
sun dipped and disappeared, and the woods fell instantly into the
gravity and greyness of the early night.

CHAPTER II
- IN WHICH THE PRINCE PLAYS HAROUN-AL-RASCHID
THE night fell upon the Prince while he was threading green tracks in
the lower valleys of the wood; and though the stars came out overhead
and displayed the interminable order of the pine-tree pyramids, regular
and dark like cypresses, their light was of small service to a traveller in
such lonely paths, and from thenceforth he rode at random. The austere
face of nature, the uncertain issue of his course, the open sky and the

free air, delighted him like wine; and the hoarse chafing of a river on
his left sounded in his ears agreeably.
It was past eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at
last out of the forest on the firm white high-road. It lay downhill before
him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the
thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So it ran, league after
league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there skirting
the sea-surge, here gleaming in the lights of cities; and the innumerable
army of tramps and travellers moved upon it in all lands as by a
common impulse, and were now in all places drawing near to the inn
door and the night's rest. The pictures swarmed and vanished in his
brain; a surge of temptation, a beat of all his blood, went over him, to
set spur to the mare and to go on into the unknown for ever. And then it
passed away; hunger and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions
which we call common sense, resumed their empire; and in that
changed mood his eye lighted upon two bright windows on his left
hand, between the road and river.
He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking with
his whip on the door of a large farmhouse, and a chorus of dogs from
the farmyard were making angry answer. A very tall, old, white-headed
man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had been of great
strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was
fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke
was broken and falsetto.
'You will pardon me,' said Otto. 'I am a traveller and have entirely lost
my way.'
'Sir,' said the old man, in a very stately, shaky manner, 'you are at the
River Farm, and I am Killian Gottesheim, at your disposal. We are here,
sir, at about an equal distance from Mittwalden in Grunewald and
Brandenau in Gerolstein: six leagues to either, and the road excellent;
but there is not a wine bush, not a carter's alehouse, anywhere between.
You will have to accept my hospitality for the night; rough hospitality,
to which I make you freely welcome; for, sir,' he added with a bow, 'it
is God who sends the guest.'
'Amen. And I most heartily thank you,' replied Otto, bowing in his turn.
'Fritz,' said the old man, turning towards the interior, 'lead round this
gentleman's horse; and you, sir, condescend to enter.'

Otto entered a chamber occupying the greater part of the ground- floor
of the building. It had probably once been divided;