Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/370

 discovering that Kinkel, like a bird, had escaped from his cell, and how one turnkey after another with a troubled face would run to the director and the whole gang of them would put their heads together and notify the higher authorities; and how they would then examine the guards of the city gates, and how they would hear of a carriage that between twelve and one o'clock had rattled through the Potsdam gate, and how then a troop of mounted constables would be hurried after us in the direction of Nauen and Hamburg, while we were paying a visit to our friends in Mecklenburg.

“I only wish,” remarked Hensel anxiously, “that we could make that visit a little more quickly.” The sun was up when we greeted the boundary pole of Mecklenburg. Even there we did not by any means feel quite safe, although a little safer than on Prussian territory. The trot of our horses became slower and slower. One of them appeared utterly exhausted. So we had to stop at the nearest Mecklenburg inn, in Dannenwalde. There Hensel washed the horses with warm water, which helped a little, but only for a short time. In the town of Fürstenberg we had to unharness them for a longer stop because they could go no farther, having put over fifty miles behind them. But at last we reached Strelitz safely, where in the person of Judge Petermann, a city magistrate, we had an enthusiastic friend and protector, who already on the preceding night had been on the road with one of the relay carriages.

Petermann received us with so demonstrative a joy that I feared he would not refrain from proclaiming the happy event from the windows of his house to the passersby. In fact, he could not deny himself the pleasure of bringing in some friends. Soon we sat down to a plentiful meal, and with merrily clinking glasses we waited for another carriage and fresh horses. There we took a cordial leave of our friend Hensel.