d policeman. The landlord stood at the door in some perplexity,
and the policeman explained in a few moments what remained to be done.
"You must make a statement to the local judge, and give the man up to
me. He shall go back in your carriage to Rosmin. You will do well to get
rid of him, for this is a wild country, and it will be safer for you to
have him at Rosmin than here, where he has friends and accomplices."

After a long search, a sheet of paper was found in a cupboard, the
statement made and submitted to the policeman, who shook his head a
little over the Polish composition, and the prisoner lifted into the
carriage, the gendarme taking his seat beside him, and saying to Anton,
"I have long expected something of the kind. You may have often occasion
to want me again." The carriage then drove away, and thus the property
came under Anton's administration. He felt as if cast on a desert
island.

His portmanteau and traveling effects were leaning against a mud wall,
and the Polish landlord was the only man who could give him and Karl any
information or advice in their forlorn condition.

Now that the steward was fairly gone, the landlord grew more
communicative, and showed himself serviceable and obliging. A long
conversation ensued, and its purport was what Anton had apprehended from
the warning given by the Commissary Walter and other Rosmin officials.
The inspector had, during the last few weeks, done all he could in the
way of spoliation, rendered daring by a report which had found its way
from the town to the village, that the present proprietor would never be
able to take possession of the estate. At last Anton said, "What that
wretched man has done away with he will have to account for; our first
care must be to preserve what is still to be found on the property. You
must be our guide to-day."

They then examined the empty buildings. Four horses and two
servants--they were gone into the wood--a few old plows, a pair of
harrows, two wagons, a britzska, a cellar full of potatoes, a few
bundles of hay, a little straw--the inventory did not take much time in
drawing up. The buildings were all out of repair, not through age, but
neglect.

"Where is the dwelling-house?" inquired Anton. The landlord led the way
out of the yard to the meadow--a broad plain, gradually sloping down to
the level of the brook. It had been a great pasture. The cattle had
trodden it down into holes; the snouts of greedy swine had roo