They broke into a hunting tune. I could tell, from the lilt of the music, it was the chase that was speaking in the inarticulate language of the strings. The piccolo had discarded his instrument for a horn; I could hear the yapping of the dogs, and the pack bursting into full cry; the horn, and the echoes of the horn from the rocks and woods, the halalli. Gay, ghostly, beautiful, the music swept me along with it, the very guests below forgot their chatter; I could see them keeping time with their feet. Enchantment had seized upon the old schloss, the green-coated jägers crowded, as if by permission, to the passage entrance, and their harsh voices took up the song which now broke from the lips of the magicians in the long coats to the accompaniment of the violins and the hunting-horn, a song the words of which were not translated for me till long, long afterwards: Hound and horn give voice and tongue, Fill the woods with echoes gay; Let your music sweet be flung To the Brocken far away. Jägers with the horns ye wind, Hounds whose tongues the chase shall bay; Let your voice the echoes find Of the Brocken old and grey. Hark! amidst the bracken green Bells the buck whose vigil keeps Danger from the hind unseen, Danger from the fawn that sleeps. Hears he us, yet heeds us not, Dreams he that we are the wind; Phantoms we of hounds forgot, Ghosts of huntmen long since blind. Dreams we are the forest's breath Waking to the touch of day; Recks not 'tis the horn of Death Dying in the distance grey. Hound and horn give voice and tongue---- And through it all the horn, now clear and ringing, now caught and dying in the echoes of the forest, now lost in the echoes of the Brocken, the wild notes flying before the phantom of the flying stag; ever the horn threading the gushing music of the violins, the voices of the musicians, and the chorus of the jägers. More music came after this, but nothing so beautiful; and as the musicians put their instruments away, and prepared to go, I nodded to the happy-faced one who had spied me. He smiled, and I trotted back to bed. I had been there listening in the gallery for a full hour, and I was cold as ice, but no one had seen me, or only the violin-player who had the face of a good angel. I shut the door cautiously, and crept back to bed. But there was something on the bed, something on the protuberance caused by my pillow. It was the handle of a knife. The blade of the knife was plunged into the mound of the bedclothes just where my head would have been. It was Joubert's knife--his "couteau de chasse," a thing he was immensely proud of, a thing as keen as a razor. That was just like one of Joubert's tricks. He had come in, found my device, and left this, as much as to say, "You'll see what you'll get in the morning."