In the meantime, from the castle and the wings, which had caught fire from the out-buildings, thick columns of smoke were rising heavenward.  While Sternbald and three busy grooms were gathering together everything in the castle that was not fastened securely and throwing it down among the horses as fair spoils, from the open windows of the castellan’s quarters the corpses of the castellan and the steward, with their wives and children, were flung down into the courtyard amid the joyful shouts of Herse.  As Kohlhaas descended the steps of the castle, the gouty old housekeeper who managed the Squire’s establishment threw herself at his feet.  Pausing on the step, he asked her where the Squire Wenzel Tronka was.  She answered in a faint trembling voice that she thought he had taken refuge in the chapel.  Kohlhaas then called two men with torches, and, since they had no keys, he had the door broken open with crowbars and axes.  He knocked over altars and pews; nevertheless, to his anger and grief, he did not find the Squire.

It happened that, at the moment when Kohlhaas came out of the chapel, a young servant, one of the retainers of the castle, came hurrying upon his way to get the Squire’s chargers out of a large stone stable which was threatened by the flames.  Kohlhaas, who at that very moment spied his two blacks in a little shed roofed with straw, asked the man why he did not rescue the two blacks.  The latter, sticking the key in the stable-door, answered that he surely must see that the shed was already in flames.  Kohlhaas tore the key violently from the stable-door, threw it over the wall, and, raining blows as thick as hail on the man with the flat of his sword, drove him into the burning shed and, amid the horrible laughter of the bystanders, forced him to rescue the black horses.  Nevertheless, when the man, pale with fright, reappeared with the horses, only a few moments before the shed fell in behind him, he no longer found Kohlhaas.  Betaking himself to the men gathered in the castle inclosure, he asked the horse-dealer, who several times turned his back on him, what he was to do with the animals now.

Kohlhaas suddenly raised his foot with such terrible force that the kick, had it landed, would have meant death; then, without answering, he mounted his bay horse, stationed himself under the gateway of the castle, and, while his men continued their work of destruction, silently awaited the break of day.

When the morning dawned the entire castle had burned down and only the walls remained standing; no one was left in it but Kohlhaas and his seven men.  He dismounted from his horse and, in the bright sunlight which illuminated every crack and corner, once more searched the inclosure.  When he had to admit, hard though it was for him to do so, that the expedition against the castle had failed, with a heart full of pain and grief he sent Herse and some of the other men to gather news of the direction in which the Squire