At length the appointed night arrived for this perilous
undertaking. Before Wolfert left his home he counseled his wife
and daughter to go to bed, and feel no alarm if he should not
return during the night. Like reasonable women, on being told not
to feel alarm they fell immediately into a panic. They saw at once
by his manner that something unusual was in agitation; all their
fears about the unsettled state of his mind were revived with
tenfold force; they hung about him, entreating him not to expose
himself to the night air, but all in vain. When once Wolfert was
mounted on his hobby,[1] it was no easy manner to get him out of
the saddle. It was a clear, starlight night when he issued out of
the portal of the Webber palace. He wore a large flapped hat, tied
under the chin with a handkerchief of his daughter's, to secure him
from the night damp, while Dame Webber threw her long red cloak
about his shoulders, and fastened it round his neck.
[1] Hobby, or hobbyhorse, a favorite theme of thought; hence, "to
mount a hobby" is to follow a favorite pursuit.
The doctor had been no less carefully armed and accoutered by his
housekeeper, the vigilant Frau Ilsy, and sallied forth in his
camlet robe by way of surcoat,[1] his black velvet cap under his
cocked hat, a thick clasped book under his arm, a basket of drugs
and dried herbs in one hand, and in the other the miraculous rod of
divination.
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