“Did I know where she was going?” I had been following her blindly, forgetful of forest or stream, but now I became interested in the path. She would tell me. She was going to visit Dame Hedwig, “a very wise woman.” Surely not a witch? Dame Hedwig had been confessed only last month by Father Augustin. But she gathered all manner of healing herbs in the forest, and Gräfin Ilsa must needs visit her to renew the supply at Schloss Blankenburg. And why had the Graf’s daughter gone this solitary road without escort? Another wonderful laugh rewarded my question. Had she not wandered over the slopes of the Harzland since she was at her nurse’s knee? Did she not know every trout-pool, every pine crest from the Brocken to the wondrous Bodethal? The red deer were her friends. All the peasant folk loved her. What need of a pack of silly serving-men to scamper at her heels? She led me onward till the leafy path came out upon a more traversed way, which brought us soon into a still more open clearing. Here before us to the westward spread a noble vista of the pine-crowned hills, and in the purple distance, a monarch among the summits, which Lady Ilsa was not slow to tell me, was the famous Brocken. A long tale was soon being poured into my ears of the awful witches who flew every evening on broomsticks from the Witches’ Dancing Ground above the rushing Bode to this weird summit, there to consort the night through with their lord, the Master Devil. “And I thought you had come down by day from the Brocken to visit them,” she was saying sweetly, when we halted before a little thatch-roofed hut, with a great oak tree spreading its ample shade over the cavernous chimney. Dame Hedwig was before the door, watering her bright array of hollyhocks. Her bent old shape courtesied as she saw the Gräfin, while she looked up at me from under her white cap with shrewd gray eyes of questioning. My new friend made haste to explain who I might be and what was her errand, and Hedwig courtesied again when Ilsa had ceased, and I could feel her keen gaze going all over me. “Ei: so you are the new ‘Countly Grace,’ the Lord of Regenstein? You the heir of old Graf Sigismund who was lord when I was a girl? How times have changed! And so you are just come from the Welschland?--” I cannot say I felt complimented at her running commentary as she bustled about her little kitchen, opening bags and boxes, and making up sundry small packages for the lady. “I am not unworthy of Graf Sigismund and the rest, I trust,” I said a little stiffly, put on the defensive by her cold scrutiny, and somewhat piqued as I saw that the Gräfin regarded her comments with suppressed amusement. “Unworthy? I said not that to your Lordship. Your Lordship is like an unproved herb among my simples. How can I tell yet whether you can kill or cure? Graf Sigismund had a two-handed sword as long as a man. Your Lordship carries--that.” Her skinny finger pointed contemptuously at my slight rapier.