Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/639

19, 1863.] “It would be a change for the poor girl,” said the worthy man, “and hearten her up a bit.”

Frau Stegen consenting, Johanna hurried across the street upon her visit next morning before dawn. At noon, the good man of the house, standing according to simple German custom smoking his pipe before the door, hastily called the girls, and showed three gendarmes turning in to search Frau Stegen’s house. The fellows examined the old mother severely, trying to extract her daughter’s whereabouts, declaring from the clothes and so forth they discovered the girl could only just have left the place. Frau Stegen kept firm, and the gendarmes in revenge searched all the houses in the street, including that of the friendly neighbour. By rare good fortune, they forgot to look in the hen-house, where the fugitive was concealed.

It was evident, after this, there was no safety in Lüneburg for Johanna. Watched and guarded as the place now was, however, it was anything but easy to get out of the town. Still, the attempt must be made. Her mother accompanied her next night to the outer wall, where they parted. Johanna waited until all was quiet, managed to scale the wall and to pass the ditch, but was stopped by the palisades. She climbed them at last, after many fruitless efforts, balanced herself upon the top, and jumped. As ill luck would have it, her dress caught in the sharpened points and tore, the noise attracting the attention of the sentry singing on the wall. His rapid challenge echoed through the night. Sustaining her weight upon her hands, the girl clung breathlessly to the palisades, not daring to move a muscle. The sentry listened a minute, peered out into the darkness, saw nothing, contentedly shouldered his musket again, and resumed his walk and his song.

This danger surmounted, Johanna made for Natendorf, a village five miles from Lüneburg, where a friend was the pastor’s wife. With these kind people she abode four weeks, enjoying rest, happiness, and quiet.

An old woman from Lüneburg came one day begging into the parsonage. She recognised Johanna with surprise, but was friendly, even to obsequiousness. The woman was well treated, feasted, and sent away with presents of food and money, vowing by all her hopes of salvation not to betray a syllable. She may have been sincere. It is charitable to hope she was. But if she did not plainly denounce Johanna to the French, she did the next thing to it. She talked about her discovery, and the story soon reached the ears of the authorities.

Apprehending treachery, Johanna had already determined to quit the house. The entreaties of her friends were unable to stifle the foreboding of approaching danger. She left, and turned again towards Lüneburg—for where else could she go? She was hardly clear of the premises when she heard the clank of accoutrements; and, slipping rapidly behind a hedge, saw gendarmes riding up towards the parsonage.

Now it happened that at that period there were only two women, residents of Lüneburg, who had reddish hair,—Johanna Stegen and a younger female of indifferent character, well known to the French officials. As Johanna was hastening that morning along the high road, she snddenly perceived this latter girl with three douaniers a little distance on in front. In that level district it was impossible to think of evading them. Johanna hastily concealed her hair—whose colour was so conspicuous—beneath a white handkerchief, took her light straw hat in her hand, and passed the party boldly with a rapid step. The female recognised her immediately.

“Why, that’s Johanna Stegen!” she exclaimed.

Rattle flew the sabres of the gendarmes from their sheaths. The sabre to a French gendarme is like the staff to an English policeman: he feels twice as big a man with the symbol of authority in his hand.

Johanna no sooner heard the ominous sound than she set off at the top of her speed, and the chase began. Over hedge and ditch, across fields, through a wood where the fugitive lost her shoes and hurried on with bleeding feet, along the high-road again, the flight continued for full six miles, until, coming to the bridge across a little stream, the poor hunted girl in her despair resolved to end her misery at once. She had already swung over the balustrade, and was on the point of letting go her hold with a prayer to be forgiven, when, looking back, she saw that her pursuers were even more exhausted than herself, and had halted by the wayside for breath. The sight gave her fresh courage. She set off again upon the Lüneburg road, passing vehicles and footgoers, none of whom chose to understand the shouts of her pursuers to stop the runaway.

She had got close to the town before she recollected it would be running into the lion’s jaws to enter it in broad daylight. She turned rapidly off the road, and making for a well-known farm close at hand, burst into the kitchen with the cry, “Oh, help! help! Save me from the French!”

The inmates at first refused assistance. They paid no heed to her despairing entreaties, declaring they would not get into trouble for a stranger, until at last the girl was recognised by the mistress, attracted by the noise.

“Good heaven!” cried the farmer’s wife. “Why, surely, it’s Johanna! This way, girl. Follow me!”

She raised the flap of the cellar extending beneath the kitchen, hurried the fugitive down a ladder, and hid her underneath a cask. A basket and some cloths were thrown over the trap, and all resumed their occupations. The pursuers rushed in, with some comrades picked up on the road, and demanded Johanna. Immense astonishment and protestations of utter ignorance of any such person.

“She came in here, I know!” said one of the gendarmes. “We’ll unearth her. Comrades, search the house.”

The men dispersed all over the farm, and searched it from top to bottom, without success. Nobody dreamt of the out-of-sight out-of-mind cellar trap, and Johanna was saved.

“She must have escaped through the adjoining garden,” suggested the girls.