"Christine's joyful welcome roused me from my rapt delight in gazing. When I turned towards her I saw the Forest Hermitage,--the Observatory, as Johann Leopold called it,--a two-storied pavilion, with a high, pointed roof. Red Jakob was just coming out of his door. Even without his lame arm, I should have recognized him by his thick tawny curls, although his rather low stature and delicate frame were a disappointment to me. After all that I had heard of him, I had expected a giant. As he approached me and uttered a few words of gratitude, I had a disagreeable sensation; there was something in his eyes reminding me of a beast of prey lurking for a victim,--did you notice this?--and when he laughed and showed his dazzlingly white, pointed teeth, I was almost afraid of him. "This impression was strengthened by the bitterness which fairly saturates his rude humour. Christine, fortunately, takes it all in jest, and only laughs. When, after I had admired every nook and corner of her small domain, she conducted me to her sitting-room, and with fresh exclamations of delight made me sit down upon a hard old leathern sofa, her husband said, with a scornful laugh, 'Don't make so much of your belongings, or the gracious Fräulein will think you took such a miserable cripple as myself only for the sake of what you got with him.' "She looked at her red-haired monster with a blissful smile. 'There now, Fräulein, he is always joking like that,' she made reply. 'Because he thinks I might grieve for coming to him, poor as I was, he makes believe that he cares nothing for all that we have; but he really likes it as well as I do.' "With these words she left the room, and I heard her bustling about in the kitchen. Red Jakob took a seat opposite me. 'Yes, yes, it is a great thing to set up as superintendent,' he said, and laughed so that all his pointed teeth showed between his red lips. 'And if I now and then lay hold on a fellow using his shooting-iron where he ought not, I can show myself as honest as an old thief turned detective.' "'You should not say such bitter things,' I said to him. 'My cousin, Johann Leopold, likes you, and you know it.'