Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/205

 figure, enveloped in a cloak as black as pitch, surmounted by an enormous Spanish ruff; but the most horrible thing of all was, that Black Cloak had got no head! When the carriage stopped, so did No Head: when the carriage went on, so did he. “O-o-h!” groaned John, his hair standing perfectly upright. “Postillion! do you see that?”—“To be sure I do,” replied the postillion, in a very subdued tone; “there’s no mistake about it; but, silence!”

John sunk down upon the foot-board in a perfect agony of fear. And as in a thunder-storm in the night time, timid people love to get the whole house together, thinking themselves the safer the more there are of it; so John thought he would see whether he could not lessen his own terror by imparting a share of it to his mistresses. Accordingly he knocked, first gently, then loud, at the carriage window. Mamma first awoke; angry at being thus roused from her comfortable sleep, she pettishly cried out, “What’s the matter?”—“Please your Ladyship,” said John, in a voice scarcely audible, “look there! There’s a man without a head walking before the carriage!”—“Idiot,” said the Countess, “what silly stuff hast been dreaming about? For that matter,” added she, “men without heads are no novelty; there are plenty of such at Breslau, and everywhere else: where’s thy head, for instance?”

The daughters, who were now awake, did not feel