y began to make
wry faces, that it would not cost us the horses, at all events. On the
third morning I put them too, and brought in three loads of corn."

Kohlhaas, whose heart swelled, fixed his eyes on the ground, and said,
"They told me nothing of that, Herse."

The man, however, assured him that it was so. "My incivility," he
said, "consisted in this: that I would not allow the horses to be yoked
again, when they had scarcely taken their feed at noon, and that when
the castellan and the bailiff told me to take fodder gratis, and to
pocket the money which had been given me, I gave them a short answer,
turned on my heel, and walked off."

"But," said Kohlhaas, "it was not for this incivility that you were
sent away from the Tronkenburg."

"God forbid!" said the man, "it was on account of a rascally piece of
injustice. For in the evening, the horses of two knights, who had come
to the Tronkenburg, were put in the stable, and mine were tied to the
stable-door. And when I took the horses out of the hand of the
castellan, and asked him where they were to be kept, he showed me a
pigsty, built with boards and laths against the castle wall."

"You mean," interrupted Kohlhaas, "that it was such a bad place for
horses, that it was more like a pigsty than a stable."

"I mean a pigsty, master," said Herse, "really and truly a pigsty,
where the pigs ran in and out, and in which I could not stand upright."

"Perhaps there was no other place for the horses," observed Kohlhaas,
"and those of the knights had, in some measure, the preference."

"The place," answered the servant, dropping his voice, "was indeed
narrow. Seven knights in all were stopping at the castle; but if it
had been you--you would have put the horses a little closer together.
I said that I would try to hire a stable in the village, but the
castellan objected that he must have the horses under his own eye, and
that I must not venture to move them from the yard."

"Hem!" said Kohlhaas, "what did you do then?"

"Why, as the bailiff told me that the two guests would only stop over
the night, and would leave the next morning, I led the horses into the
sty. But the next day passed, and nothing of the kind took place; and
when the third came, I heard the visitors would remain at the castle
for some weeks."

"Then, in the end," said Kohlhaas, "it was not so bad in the pigsty, as
it seemed, when first you looked into it."

"True," replied Herse, "when I