"Let us gather a few," said he; "the young wife of one of my friends
understands how to make a glorious dish of them, and if I take her a
large collection, she will consider it a kind attention. Let us take
our hats and handkerchiefs, and fill them. You will take the right
path into the wood, and I the left. In one hour we will meet here
again."
Without waiting for an answer, the good Halber turned to the left in
the wood, and was lost in the thicket. In an hour he returned to the
carriage, and found Trenck smilingly awaiting him.
He turned pale, and with an expression of exasperation, he
exclaimed:
"You have not then lost yourself in the woods?"
"I have not lost myself," said Trenck, quietly; "and I have gathered
a quantity of beautiful mushrooms."
Trenck handed him his handkerchief, filled with small, round
mushrooms. Halber threw them with a sort of despair into the
carriage, and then, without saying one word, he mounted and nodded
to Trenck to follow him.
"And now let us be off," said he, shortly. "Coachman, drive on!"
He leaned back in the carriage, and with frowning brow he gazed up
into the heavens.
Slowly the carriage rolled through the sand, and it seemed as if the
panting, creeping horses shrank back from reaching their goal, the
boundary-line of the Wurtembergian dragoons.
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