Valentin looked pained at these words, but he replied, calmly, "That can hardly interest you. Do not put such ideas into Michael's head, or he might ask you questions which you cannot answer." "He's too stupid for that," asserted the forester, with whom his foster-son's stupidity seemed to be an indisputable article of faith. "I don't believe he knows that he was ever even born. But Tyras is barking,--he must see Michael." In fact, the dog was barking joyously, the sound of approaching footsteps was heard, and in the next instant Michael entered the room. The new-comer was a lad of about eighteen, but his tall, powerful figure, with its awkward movements, showed nothing of the grace and freshness of youth. The face, plain and irregular in all its lines, had a half-shy, half-dreamy expression that was hardly attractive. The thick, fair curls were matted around the temples and brow, below which looked out a pair of eyes deep blue in colour, but as vacant as if no soul enlightened their depths. His dress was as sordid and neglected as the forester's, and in his entire appearance there was absolutely nothing to attract. "Well, have you come at last?" was his foster-father's gruff reception of him. "You must have gone to sleep on the way, or you would have been here long ago." "I came through the forest," replied Michael, going up to the priest, who kindly held out his hand to him. Wolfram laughed scornfully. "Didn't I tell your reverence? He didn't dare to go through the village,--I knew it." Michael paid not the slightest heed to the apparently well-grounded accusation, being well used to such treatment from his foster-father, who now took his hat and made ready to go. "I must go up to the fenced forest," he said; "it looks badly there: more than a dozen of the tallest trees are torn down; the Wild Huntsman has made terrible work there lately." "You mean the storms of the last week, Wolfram?" "No, it was the Wild Huntsman, your reverence. He is abroad every night this spring. The day before yesterday, as we came through the wood at dusk, the whole mad crew swept by not a hundred yards away. They raged and howled and stormed as though all hell had broken loose, and I suppose a bit of it had done so. Michael, stupid fool, would have rushed into the thick of it, but I caught his arm in time and held him fast." "I wanted to see the demon at close quarters," said Michael, quietly. The forester shrugged his shoulders. "There, your reverence, you see what the fellow is! He runs away from human creatures and such like, but he wants to be right in the midst of things which make every Christian shudder, and cross himself! I really believe he would have joined the phantoms if I had not held him back, and then he would now have been lying dead in the forest, for he who joins the Wild Huntsman's chase is lost."