“Please be more civil in your talk,” returned his friend.  “You were drunk all day.  The liter and a half was a mere nightcap.  If you are certain there was a torrent, then I must have been in the same condition as yourself.”

The spokesman of the previous night, who had been chided for not springing on Roland before he succeeded in doing away with the treasure, here uttered a shout.

“This water,” he said, “is clear as air.  You can see every pebble at the bottom.  Get to work, you sleepyheads, and search down the stream.  We’ll recover that bag yet, and then it’s back to Sonnenberg for breakfast.  Whoever finds it, finds it for the guild; a fair and equal division amongst us.  That is, amongst the eighteen of us.  I propose that Roland, Greusel, and Ebearhard do not share.  They were all in the plot to rob us.”

“Agreed!” cried the others, and the treasure-hunt impetuously began.

Greusel and Ebearhard watched them disappear through the forest down the stream.

“Greusel,” said Ebearhard, “what a deplorable passion is the frantic quest for money in these days, especially money that we have not earned.  Our excited treasure-hunters do not realize that at such a moment in the early morning the only subject worth consideration is breakfast.  Being unsparing and prodigal last night, it would take a small miracle of the fishes to suffice them to-day.  There is barely enough for two hungry men, and as we are rid of these chaps for half an hour at least, I propose we sit down to our first meal.”

Greusel made no comment upon this remark, but the advice commended itself to him, for he followed it.

Some time after they had finished breakfast, the unsuccessful company returned by twos and threes.  Apparently they had not wandered so far as the waterfall, for no one said anything of the amazing view of the Rhine.  Indeed, it was plain that they considered themselves involved in a boundless wilderness, and were too perplexed to suggest a way out.  After a storm of malediction over the breakfastless state of things, and a good deal of quarreling among themselves anent who had been most greedy the night before, they now turned their attention to the silent men who were watching them.

“Where’s Roland?” they demanded.

“I don’t know,” replied Greusel.

“Didn’t he tell you where he was going?”

“We have not seen him this morning,” explained Ebearhard gently.  “He seems to have disappeared in the night.  Perhaps he fell into the stream.  Perhaps, on the other hand, he has deliberately deserted us.  He gave us no hint of his intentions last night, and we are as ignorant as yourselves regarding his whereabouts.”

“This is outrageous!” cried Kurzbold.  “It is the duty of a leader to provide for his following.”

“Yes; if the following follows.”

“We have followed,” said Kurzbold indignantly, “and have been led into this desert, not in the least knowing where in Heaven’s name we are.  And now to be left like this, breakfastless, thirsty—­” Here Kurzbold’s language failed him, and he drew the back of his hand across parched lips.