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The horse-dealer, who saw clearly that on this occasion he would have to yield to superior force, made up his mind to comply with the demand, since there really was no other way out of it. He unhitched the black horses and led them into a stable which the castellan pointed out to him.
He could give it until five-thirty with profit; but he could take several afternoons off, from three-thirty until five-thirty or six, and no one would be the wiser. It was customary for Aileen to drive alone almost every afternoon a spirited pair of bays, or to ride a mount, bought by her father for her from a noted horse-dealer in Baltimore.
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there lived on the banks of the river Havel a horse-dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas, the son of a school-master, one of the most upright and, at the same time, one of the most terrible men of his day. Up to his thirtieth year this extraordinary man would have been considered the model of a good citizen.
He puts a new book through its paces as a horse-dealer does with a horse; he observes his action, his strong and weak points, and then forms a business-like estimate of his worth. It is the same with his treatment of people. He has a hard and shrewd judgment of character, and a polite contempt for weakness of every kind. He is a Radical by conviction, with a strong sense of equal rights.
He saw quite clearly that it would be to the interest of the knights to ruin Kohlhaas, if possible, on the ground of new crimes, and he begged the Elector to give him permission to have an immediate judicial examination of the horse-dealer.
The metamorphosed horse-dealer was silenced of course, and slunk to the rear, where he consoled himself by entering into a vehement dispute upon the price of hay with a farmer who had reluctantly followed his laird to the field rather than give up his farm, whereof the lease had just expired.
"Does he think I am a man of traffic a horse-dealer, who cannot mount the horses he owns? I swear by the faith of an Arab that if he had asked for Dahir, as a present, I would have sent the horse, and a troop of camels besides: but if he thinks of obtaining him by bidding a price, he will never have him; even were I bound to drink the cup of death."
In spite of this, a few days later, when the President, Count Kallheim, in the name of the Chamberlain, who was deterred by his sickness, sent a letter to the Chancellor containing this proposition, the latter did indeed send a communication to Kohlhaas in which he admonished him not to decline such a proposition should it be made to him; but in a short and rather curt answer to the President himself the Chancellor begged him not to bother him with private commissions in this matter and advised the Chamberlain to apply to the horse-dealer himself, whom he described as a very just and modest man.
"While he is out the door is open. Once, long ago, a horse-dealer was going home late, and he had been drinking a little. He saw the door in the hill open and he walked in. And there he found himself in a hall, dim and high.
"Dining at Grant's?" shouted Elkin in a fury. "Well, I'm " "'Ush, Fred!" expostulated Tomlin with a shocked glance at Mr. Franklin. "Wot's wrong wi' a bit of grub, ony ways? A very nice-spoken young gent kem 'ere twiced, an' axed for Mr. Peters the second time. He's a friend o' Mr. Grant's, I reckon." "What's wrong?" stormed the horse-dealer. "Why, everything's wrong!
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