Why does not the fellow thank his God that his
beasts are still living?" He asked whose business it was to take care
of them when the boy had run away, and whether it was not fair that the
horses should earn in the fields the food that was given them, and
concluded by telling him to cease jabbering, or he would call out the
dogs, and get some quiet that way at any rate.

The horse-dealer's heart beat strongly against his waistcoat, he felt
strongly inclined to fling the good-for-nothing mass of fat into the
mud, and set his foot on his brazen countenance. Yet his feeling of
right, which was accurate as a gold balance, still wavered; before the
tribunal of his own heart, he was still uncertain whether his adversary
was in the wrong; and, while pocketing the affronts, he went to his
horses and smoothed down their manes. Silently weighing the
circumstances, he asked, in a subdued voice, on what account the
servant had been sent away from the castle. The castellan answered
that it was because the rascal had been impudent. He had resisted a
necessary change of stables, and had desired that the horses of two
young noblemen, who had come to Tronkenburg, should remain out all
night in the high road. Kohlhaas would have given the value of the
horses to have had the servant by him, and to have compared his
statement with that of the thick-lipped castellan. He stood awhile and
smoothed the tangles out of the manes, bethinking himself what was to
be done in his situation, when suddenly the scene changed, and the
Squire Von Tronka, with a host of knights, servants, and dogs,
returning from a hare-hunt galloped into the castle-court. The
castellan, when the squire asked what had happened, took care to speak
first; and, while the dogs at the sight of the stranger were barking at
him on one side, with the utmost fury, and the knights on the other
side were trying to silence them, he set forth, distorting the matter
as much as possible, the disturbance that the horse-dealer had created,
because his horses had been used a little. Laughing scornfully, he
added that he had refused to acknowledge them as his own. "They are
not my horses, your worship!" cried Kohlhaas; "these are not the horses
that were worth thirty golden crowns! I will have my sound and
well-fed horses." The squire, whose face became pale for a moment,
alighted and said, "If the rascal will not take his horses, why let him
leave them. Come Gunther, come Han