The three took hands, prayed together, and then set out to make their last-minute preparations.

During the next hour, Heinrich, Marion, and Sabina went over the house, weepy but strong, saying good-bye to the place they loved so dearly. Would they be back in a day or two… or would they see this beloved place of life never again?

Both Sabina and the baron had business in the basement, though her father knew nothing of Sabina’s errand to what they had once called the icehouse.

Heinrich locked up his dungeon workplace, where so many secrets had yet to be stored away for another season, then hid the key and returned upstairs. He would never set foot inside Eppie’s legendary chamber again, though the memory of his life would live silently on within its hallowed stone walls, awaiting the hour of its second discovery.

That had been only hours ago. Now, with the night nearly gone, they were already far from home.

Despite the fact that everyone was nearly too exhausted to stand, Baron von Dortmann continued to exhort his foot-dragging charges onward.

As they came out of a thin clump of birch and pine, the first grey hints of dawn showed themselves toward the east. The moon, which had guided their way all night, had set an hour before; its eerie light, to which their eyes had been accustomed, now was gradually replaced by that of the stronger sun moving upward and out of his nightly place of slumber behind the great sphere called earth.

Jakob led the way out of the cover of the trees, with the cloak of darkness slowly lifting its protecting shroud from them.

They made their way along the high bank of a slender stream. He paused every minute or two to glance about, trying to remember the directions in his sleep-starved brain. Behind him walked Baron von Dortmann, the two exchanging words as necessary.

They came to a narrow footbridge across the stream, took it, then continued straight onward through the grassy pasture that lay spread out in front of them. In the distance, the spire of the church of Fürstensdorf and some of its taller buildings could be seen in the grey haze.

They entered a small orchard, walked single file through its trees, then left along its farthest edge, moving at length out of the orchard onto a dirt road, flat and wide, which ran perpendicular to their direction, extending to their right and left in a straight line farther than they could see. Directly across from them, at an angle of some thirty degrees, a narrower dirt road came from the midst of a small but dense wood, across a small open area, then joined the wider roadway.

Their instructions were to cross the wide intersection and walk into the trees by the small road. A hundred meters into the wood, they would be met by the pastor’s son, who would lead them safely into the village.