He heaved a sigh, and was about to march on. Just then there was a slight lull in the blast, and the forester gave a long, loud shout, as he had been doing at intervals. This time, however, he started and listened, for he seemed to hear something like the sound of a human voice. Again Wolfram shouted with all the force of his lungs, and from no great distance came the wailing tones, "Here! Help!" "At last!" exclaimed the forester, turning in the direction whence came the voice. "It is not the Countess, I can hear that; but where one is the other must be." Giving repeated calls, he hurried on, the answers coming more and more distinctly, until in about ten minutes he came upon Hertha's attendant, who no sooner saw him than he threw his arms about him, clinging to him like a drowning man. "Take care, you'll upset me!" growled Wolfram. "Did you not hear me shout before? For two hours we have been hallooing in every direction. Where is the Countess?" "I don't know; I lost her an hour ago." The forester roughly shook the man off the arm to which he was still clinging: "What? Lost? Thunder and lightning, man! what do you mean? Just when I think I have found the Countess, you turn up without her. Why did you not stay with her, as was your bounden duty?" "It was not my fault," wailed the man. "The fog--the storm--and the horses have gone too!" "Hold your tongue about the horses!" Wolfram interposed, roughly. "Men's lives are at stake, and you tell me nothing that I can understand. How came you here without the Countess?" It was some time before the exhausted man was able to answer the forester's questions. He was an old family servant, faithful and trustworthy, and had therefore been chosen by the Countess to attend her daughter on this expedition, but he had completely lost his presence of mind in the face of the present peril, and had been of no service whatever to his mistress. As Michael had surmised, they had taken the wrong road, and had discovered their mistake only upon reaching the mountain chapel. Then they had turned their horses' heads; but the moon, which until then had shone brightly, began to be obscured, and their ignorance of the country was disastrous. In vain did they turn in every direction; they could not find the road again and were completely lost. The horses, bewildered and nettled by the aimless wandering to and fro, finally refused to stir a step. There was nothing for it but to alight.