now every hair on his head stands on end; he remembers that in bygone days men were quite as wise as at present, and they believed it all. "Here he comes! Forgive me for not believing a word of it till now. I will--" Speidel-Roettmann rushes along the path into the wood, and throws himself down on the ground on his face, that the Wild Huntsman may gallop over him without throttling him. So he lies still and hears the fiends rush past. He clutches the snowy moss with his hand, and the moss does not give way. It is a comfort that something in the world still holds fast. Hold on! hold on! or you may be in a moment lifted up in the air, and placed on the top of a tree, or who knows where? and your face twisted entirely round, and you must go about with it in that fashion as long as you live. And he feels as if he were mocked, and some one said to him, "Is not this wood your own property? but in spite of all your foresters, and all your keepers, you cannot prevent the Wild Huntsman galloping through it. Do you hear a child's voice? do you know that voice?" Speidel-Roettmann has entirely lost his head--the snow in which he had buried his face melts from the warmth of his breath, but something melts also in his hard heart; and face to face with death, he calls out from the snowy moss, "Joseph!" as if that word had the power to save him. "I solemnly vow I will," he goes on muttering to himself. It has suddenly flashed across his thoughts, that there lived a child on earth to whom he had been guilty of great injustice, and that it is for this he hears such groans and cries in the air. He wishes to call back his son, who is in turn striving to recall his son. This is like a chain attached to another chain, and so the links go on. "I yield! set me free! keep the child!" With these words he at last ventured to raise his head a little. The noise and shouts and cries sounded now further away. "Who are you? who are you?" cries suddenly a figure, seizing him roughly, not like a man, but like an evil spirit, or the claws of a wild beast, so savage is the grasp. "I am a miserable sinner! I am the Roettmann--let me go; be merciful!" "So, I have got hold of you at last!" exclaimed the figure, and knelt down on his breast. "You shall die, for you have killed my grandson, and disowned him, and left him to want and misery." "How? what? is it you, David?" "Yes, you shall know first who is going to split your head with this axe--it is I, Schilder-David. Yes, accursed Goliah, I have got you down on the ground, and you shall die." Speidel Roettmann's strength and courage revived, after a very short deliberation. "Oh, ho! not much fear of him!" and his hand speedily followed his thoughts. He seized with one hand the man who was kneeling on him, and with the other drew forth the sharp knife he always carried on him, and cried out, "Let go, David! let go: or I'll stab you to the heart!"