Hartmut and Willibald had, in the meantime, reached the tolerably extensive forest which belonged to the estate.  The Burgsdorf fish pond, a lonely, reedy sheet of water in the middle of the wood, lay glittering in the sun in the still morning hours.  Willibald had chosen for himself a shady place upon the bank, and gave himself up, with as much perseverance as comfort, to the delights of angling, while the impatient Hartmut wandered here and there, now scaring a bird, now breaking off a branch for the blossoms, and at last, after a series of gymnastic performances, seating himself on the trunk of an old tree which lay half in the water.  “Can you never be quiet in any place?  You frighten the fish away every time,” exclaimed Will, out of humor.  “I’ve caught nothing at all to-day!”

“How can you sit for hours on the one spot waiting for the stupid fish to bite?” retorted Hartmut.  “Ah, you can spend the whole long year in the woods if you desire, you are free, free.”

“Are you a prisoner, then?” asked his friend.  “You and your comrades are out daily, are you not?”

“But never alone, never without supervision and control.  We are always and eternally in the service, even in recreation hours.  O how I hate it, this service, and the whole slavish life.”

“But Hartmut, what if your father heard you?”

“Oh, then he would punish me again as he always does.  He has nothing else for me but force and punishment, all for my own good—­that goes without saying.”

He threw himself full length on the grass, but hard as the words sounded, there was a tremor in his tone which told of pain and passion.  The young heir only shook his head soberly while he put a new bait on his hook and for a few minutes there was perfect silence.

Then suddenly something black swooped down like a flash of lightning from the height above them into the water, and a second later rose again in the air with the slippery, glittering prey in its beak.

“Bravo, that was a good catch!” cried Hartmut, rising.  But Will spoke angrily.

“The wretched robber robs our whole pond.  I will speak to the forester and tell him to fill him full of lead.”

“A robber?” repeated Hartmut, as his glance followed the heron who was just disappearing behind the high tree tops.  “Yes, of course, but how fine it must be to live such a free robber’s life up there in the air.  To descend like a flash for your booty and be up and off again where no one can follow; that’s a hunt that pays.”

“Hartmut, I verily believe you’d take pleasure in such a wild, lawless life,” said Willibald, with the repugnance of a well-trained boy for such sentiments.

His companion laughed, but it was the same bitter laugh without the joyousness of youth in its sound.

“Well, if I had any such desire, they’d take it out of me at the military academy.  There obedience and discipline is the Alpha and Omega of all things.  Will, have you never wished that you had wings?”