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“Now God forgive me!” exclaimed Schell finally, “but that is the infernal brown traveling carriage from the inn!”

“May the devil take me!” rejoined Trenck, “if I delay or flee a step from those miserable rascals.”

And they strode sturdily onward.

As soon as they were within speaking distance, one of the Prussians, a big man in a furred cap, believing them to be wholly unsuspicious, called to them:

“My dear sirs, in heaven’s name come help us! Our carriage has been overturned and it is impossible to get it out of this rut.”

The friends had reached an angle of the road where a few withered tree branches alone separated them from the others. They perceived the brown body of the carriage, half open like a huge rat-trap, and beside it the forbidding faces of their would-be captors. Trenck launched these words through the intervening screen of branches:

“Go to the devil, miserable scoundrels that you are, and may you remain there!”

Then, swift as an arrow, he sped toward the open fields to the left of the highroad, feigning flight. The carriage, which had been overturned solely for the purpose of misleading them, was soon righted and the driver lashed his horses forward in pursuit of the fugitives, the four Prussians accompanying him with drawn pistols.

When they were almost within reaching distance of their prey they raised their pistols and shouted:

“Surrender, rascals, or you are dead men!”

This was what Trenck desired. He wheeled about and discharged his pistol, sending a bullet through the first Prussian’s breast, stretching him dead upon the spot.

At the same moment Schell fired, but his assailants returned the shot and wounded him.

Trenck again discharged his pistol twice in succession. Then, as one of the Prussians, who was apparently still uninjured, took to flight across the plain he sped furiously after him. The pursuit continued some two or three hundred paces. The Prussian, as if impelled by some irresistible force, whirled around and Trenck caught sight of his blanched countenance and blood-stained linen. One of the shots had struck him!

Instantly Trenck put an end to the half-finished task with a sword thrust. But the time wasted on the Prussian had cost him dear. Returning hastily to the field of action, he perceived Schell struggling in the grasp of the two remaining Prussians. Wounded as he was, he had been unable to cope single-handed with them, and was rapidly being borne toward the carriage.

“Courage, Schell!” Trenck shouted. “I am coming!”

At the sound of his friend’s voice Schell felt himself saved. By a supreme effort he succeeded in releasing himself from his captors.

Frantic with rage and disappointment, the Prussians again advanced to the attack upon the two wretched fugitives, but Trenck’s blood was up. He made a furious onslaught upon them with his sword, driving them back step by step to their carriage, into which they finally tumbled, shouting to the driver in frantic haste to whip up his horses.

As the carriage dashed away the friends drew long breaths of relief and wiped away the blood and powder stains from their heated brows. Careless of their sufferings, these iron-hearted men merely congratulated each other upon their victory.

“Ah, it’s well ended, Schell,” exclaimed Trenck, “and I rejoice that we have had this opportunity to chastise the miserable traitors. But you are wounded, my poor Schell!”

“It is nothing,” the lieutenant replied carelessly; “merely a wound in the throat, and, I think, another in the head.”

This was the last attempt for a considerable time to regain possession of Trenck’s person. But the two friends suffered greatly from hardships and were made to feel more than once the cruelty of Prussian oppression. Even Trenck’s sister, instigated thereto by her husband, who feared to incur the displeasure of Frederick the Great, refused the poor fugitives shelter, money, or as much as a crust of bread, and this after Trenck had jeopardized his liberty by returning to Prussian soil in order to meet her.