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Come you to Sihamba, that she may show you the path before she dies." Now Jan went to the glade that I pointed out to find the schimmel, while I led Ralph to Sihamba. She heard him coming and opened her eyes. "Welcome, husband of Swallow," she said, "you have done well and bravely, yet it was the hand of fate and not yours that smote yonder on the rock point.
Mascarin gave his friend a meaning glance, and then, in a careless manner, replied, "Caroline Schimmel, a former servant of the Champdoce family, also patronizes our office. How did you find her, Beaumarchef?" "Well, an idea occurred to me." "Pooh! do you have ideas at your time of life?" Beaumarchef put on an air of importance.
But the doctor did not seem to have much affection for him; yet in the evenings when the little one was in bed he went through the same performance that had been customary during the lifetime of its mother, and once in a while he would lift the child out of the cradle and press it to his heart so passionately that the boy, in a fright would struggle to get away from him and would cry for Frau Schimmel.
The new laboratory was presently the scene of the most zealous labours, and Herr Schimmel was delighted with his new position, for no apothecary and chemist had ever before had such a well-fitted furnace and such delicate scales and instruments to work with; and if he did not understand what was the end of so much weighing and fusing and distilling, or what the remedies were that the doctor was always decanting from the boiling liquids, yet the occupation made the long summer days pass most pleasantly, for he had none of that love of the open air that most Leipzigers bring into the world with them.
"Mount, Swallow," said Sihamba, seizing the head of the great schimmel. Suzanne set her foot upon the shoulder of Zinti, who knelt to receive it, and sprang into the saddle. Then having lifted Sihamba on the grey mare Zinti mounted the other horse himself, holding the mule by a leading riem. "Which way, mistress?" he asked. "Homewards," she answered, and they cantered forward through the wood.
After a long silence and much consideration the only thing that Herr Schimmel found to say in answer to these important revelations was: "It is all the same to me," to which his dear wife, with like brevity, and sincere disgust replied: "You fool!" The next morning the doctor began work afresh and with redoubled zeal.
Six months later I knew that it was the Duchess who had addressed this missive to her husband, and why she had done so. By degrees I learned all the secret to which this scrap of paper gave me the clue; and if I have been a long while over it, it is because one link was wanting which I only discovered yesterday." "Ah," said the doctor, "then Caroline Schimmel has spoken."
Then, gripping its shoulders with her knees, Sihamba shook the reins and called aloud to the schimmel, waving the black rod she always carried in her hand, so that the fiery beast, having plunged once, leapt away like an antelope, and in another minute was nothing but a speck racing towards the mountains.
Now Sihamba took a piece of biltong from a saddle-bag and began to eat it, for she knew that she would need all her cleverness and strength. "Take the bag of mealies," she said, "and divide it among the horses and the mule, giving a double share to the schimmel."
"Back," she screamed as she came, "death waits you in the pass;" whereon, compelled to it as it were by the weight of the words and the face of she who spoke them, we turned our horses' heads and galloped after the schimmel for the half of a mile or more till we were safe in the open veldt.
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