"Year after year," he burst out, "I pined in that cursed slavery, and longed and longed for those I had left behind; and you offered me nixies, and promised that I should be free to return to my own when I had married you to a mortal wife." "And that promise was kept," Albrecht responded. "Kept!" the other echoed with fierce scorn. "You kept it when all that I loved was gone. You set me free to seek a row of graves; to carry my miserable, broken body about the world alone. God's blood!" he went on, dashing the spurs into the bleeding flanks of his steed and still reining the animal back with a strong hand; "at the grave of my wife I took new oaths of vengeance, and I hastened back to keep them. It was not hard! The folk of the wood were eager to help me by bringing the count and the lady alone together in the forest, and he already had the work of winning--" "Silence!" broke in Albrecht, in a voice of thunder. The wild excitement of Herr Frederich was infecting him also, despite all his efforts at self-control. His cheeks were flushed, and he breathed deeply and pantingly between his teeth. The cripple was not slow to perceive these signs of growing passion, and he fanned the flame with new taunts and deeper reproaches. "Fool of a kobold!" he cried out yet again; "to think you could play with a soul and be safe! Was it then like a boar-spear with which your hand could have its own will? Oh, the wise wood-creature!" He broke into shrill laughter and bitter, till all the forest resounded; and among the dark recesses of the pines it seemed that unseen lips joined in the evil peal of wicked scorn and merriment. "Now," he cried, and in his voice was a new ring of triumph, "our kobold hath ruined not alone his own soul, lightly gotten and quickly lost, but hers which could by no means be satisfied with such a brutish, half-human thing as her husband. It is not a marvel that she must needs turn toward a human lover after--" The knight sprang upon him with a face distorted with rage and jealousy, and caught the cripple by the throat. He dragged him from the saddle, and Herr Frederich was as helpless in the grasp of those powerful hands as if he were in the clutch of a lion. Albrecht dashed him to the earth. His head was grazed by a stone, and for an instant everything swam before his eyes. The thick-growing ferns closed over him like the waves of the sea, and then they were parted by the face of Albrecht, who stooped toward him. "Thou art a craven and a liar!" Albrecht hissed between his set teeth. Then again with strong hands he seized Herr Frederich, and lifted him out of the bracken as if to dash him again to earth. With a moan and a mighty effort to speak, the cripple, swinging in air, flung at the knight one last bitter taunt. "It is bravely done," he cried, "to kill the man your father maimed!"