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It was not till August that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast and invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and the three had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during which Stanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's denunciations of his host's venality, and the brightness of Kate's gratitude was tempered by a tinge of reproach.
Not a word was uttered for many seconds. Then old Caspar's tense muscles relaxed and his arms dropped limply from their crossed position on his breast. "My child, my child!" he cried, lifelessly. "You cannot do this thing!" "But the people?" cried Gaspon, his eyes gleaming. "You cannot act against the will of the people. Our laws, natural and otherwise. proscribe the very act you have in mind.
It needed but a glance at Major Caspar's face, as, dripping and weary, he entered the house, to show that his search for the raft had been fruitless. His wife's mother-instinct translated his expression at once, and the quick tears started to her eyes as she exclaimed, "My boy! What has happened to him?" "Nothing serious, you may rest assured, my dear," replied the Major.
"Here goes, then!" muttered Caspar to himself; at the same time placing himself firmly on one knee, raising his gun and cocking it. It was a splendid lock that upon the right-hand barrel of Caspar's gun one in which the cock, on being drawn to the full, gives tongue to tell that the spring is in perfect order.
"Piff is paff, and paff is puff!" laughed Ulrich. "When I snap the twigs, you always hear them say 'knack, knack, and 'knack' is a word too. The juggler Caspar's magpie, can say twenty." "But father said so," replied Ruth, arranging the dry sticks. "He toils hard, but not for gold and gain, to find the right words.
It is possible that he may be right; but his story carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give it credit without further proof. In the seventh volume of Hitzig's "Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence," there is a communication from Lieutenant von Pirch, disclosing Caspar's acquaintance with certain Hungarian words.
But there were none of these things for them. Indeed, caravaners very soon get out of the habit of making plans at all. It is all too uncertain. The only things that really are certain are work and delay. They got no nearer to Blenheim than to peer through its gates and to recite, very imperfectly, the verses about old Caspar's work and little Wilhelmine.
Caspar reflected, and very correctly: that it was the extra weight that had hindered the eagle from ascending. It was not so much beyond his strength neither. Perhaps had it been only half as heavy, or even a little more, he might have succeeded in carrying it over the cliff. What if the weight should be reduced? To make the rope more slender did not enter into Caspar's calculations.
This is still more impossible than Stanhope's theory; for in this case Daumer, Feuerbach, Hiltel the jailer, Binder the mayor, and indeed all Caspar's earliest friends, instead of being victims of an imposture, are made partakers in the fraud.
So now they are off again, and goodness knows what scrapes they will get into next; while here I am, as helpless to prevent them as an old hen with a brood of ducklings. There is one thing I can do, though. I must return to Caspar's Mill at once, and I want you and your niece to go with me.
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