At that time there lived upon the Bocksberg two singular creatures--sisters--one named "little Kateline," and the other "great Berbel." These creatures, who were almost in tatters, had taken up their abode in the "Cave of Luitprandt," so called, according to old chronicles, because the German king, before invading Alsace, had caused to be interred in that immense vault of red sandstone the savage chiefs who had fallen in the battle of Blutfeld. The hot spring which always bubbles in the middle of the cavern protected the eerie sisters from the sharp colds of winter; and the woodcutter, Daniel Horn, of Tiefenbach, had been good enough to fill up the largest entrance to the rock with heaps of brushwood. By the side of the hot spring there is another, cold as ice and clear as crystal. Kateline, who always drank of its waters, was scarce four foot high, thick-set and bloated; and her cowering figure, her round eyes and enormous goitre, rendered her whole appearance peculiarly suggestive of a big turkey-hen in a reverie. Every Sunday she carried into Tiefenbach a great basket, which the people of the place filled with boiled potatoes, crusts of bread, and occasionally, on high days, with cakes and other remains of their festivals;--with which she reascended breathlessly to her rocky home, muttering, gibbering, and behaving in the absurdest way. Meanwhile Berbel took care to drink from the cold spring: she was gaunt, one-eyed, scraggy as a bat, with a flat nose, large ears, a gleaming eye, and thrived upon the booty obtained by her sister. Seldom did she descend from the Bocksberg, except in July, at the time of greatest heat--when she proceeded to launch her incantations--her enchanting-wand a withered thistle--against the crops of those who had failed to contribute to her sister's basket. These imprecations were always believed to be followed by dire storms, hail, and destructive vermin without stint: whence they came to be dreaded as the plague, and the hag herself to be regarded as a weather-witch (_Wetterhexe_), while "little Kateline" was looked upon as the good genius of Tiefenbach and its neighborhood. In such wise Berbel folded her arms and took her ease in her cave, while her sister went gibbering along the highways. Unfortunately for the sisters, Yégof had for many years established his winter-quarters in "Luitprandt's cavern;" and it was thence he set forth every spring on a visit to his innumerable châteaux and feudatories, as far as Geierstein in the Hundsrück. Every year, therefore, toward the end of November, after the first snows, he arrived with his raven, to the accompaniment of piercing cries from Wetterhexe. "What have you to grumble at?" he would say, while installing himself in the place of honor. "Are you not intruders upon my domain, and am I not truly good to permit two such useless old hags (_Valkyries_) to stay in the Valhalla of my fathers?"