"I see," said the Doctor one day to his friend, "that you are strenuously exerting yourself to educate and fashion the ideas of the older people of the household. I put my hopes in the souls of the younger generation. Hans, the eldest, is very far from sharing the views of the father and sister; he shows an interest in the old treasure, and if we ourselves should not succeed in making the discovery, at some future period he will not spare the old walls." In conjunction with Hans, the Doctor secretly resumed his investigations. In quiet hours, when the Proprietor was unsuspectingly riding about his farm, and the Professor working in his room or sitting in the honeysuckle arbor, the Doctor went prying about the house. In the smock-frock of a laborer, which Hans had brought to his room, he searched the dusty corners of the house high and low. More than once he frightened the female servants of the household by suddenly emerging from behind some old bin in the cellar, or by appearing astride on one of the rafters of the roof. In the dairy a hole had been dug for the forming of an ice-pit; one day when the laborers had gone away at noon, Mademoiselle, the housekeeper, passed close to the uncovered pit, suspecting nothing. Suddenly, she beheld a head without a body, with fiery eyes and bristly hair, which slowly groped along the ground and which turned its face to her with a derisive, fiendish laugh. She uttered a shrill cry and rushed into the kitchen, where she sank fainting on a stool and was only revived by the copious sprinkling of water and encouraging words. At dinner she was so much troubled that every one was struck by her uneasiness. But at last it appeared that the fiendish head was to be found on the shoulders of her neighbor, the Doctor, who had secretly descended into the hole to examine the masonry.