"This is our man," exclaimed Keane, as he removed the screen from the fire and stirred the dying embers into a cheerful blaze, piling on more dried twigs, so that the trees about the glade seemed to dance like fairies. "Some woodman or peasant returning from a party," observed Sharpe. "I wonder where his cottage is," replied his friend; "it must be somewhere in the neighbourhood." "We must welcome him to a belated supper. Perhaps this good Rhine wine will open his lips still more, and he may tell us something about the birds of the Schwarzwald." "Particularly the phantom-bird," facetiously observed Keane with a smile. Nearer and nearer came the stranger, breaking occasionally into snatches of song, as though he would frighten away the goblins and weird creatures of the forest, for of the superstitious peoples of Europe, the peasantry of the Black Forest are most given to credulous beliefs. Perhaps this is because no other district of Europe is so rich in quaint legend, folklore and ghostly tradition. Now and then the approaching stranger would stop his singing to address some remark to a companion; evidently some beast of burden trudging beside him. The next moment the figure of a man, leading a pack-horse through the forest, suddenly emerged upon the clearing. Catching a sight of the dancing flames which mounted skyward as one of the airmen stirred the fire into life, and beholding the dark figures of the two strangers, the newcomer, suddenly stopped, apparently half-terrified by the sudden apparition. "Geistlich!" he muttered, staring with wide-open eyes towards the sudden flame. "Guten abend, freund!" exclaimed Keane, wishing to draw the man into conversation. The man’s fears departed as soon as he discovered that he was addressed by human beings like himself, for in his first wild flight of fancy he feared it was far otherwise, and that he had suddenly come upon one of those forbidden glades, where the sprites and goblins dance after dark. "Guten abend!" he replied, and, being asked to join the company, made haste to do so, reining in his loaded horse and tethering him to a tree-stump close by. "’Tis late to travel these lonely woods, friend," said Keane in excellent German. "Yes, ’tis late, but the moon will soon be up, and then, why, ’twill be better footing," replied the stranger, whose full, round face and longing eyes were already directed towards a wicker-covered bottle, which seemed to hold something good, so that he smacked his lips once or twice, and in fancy he was already draining the sweet nectar which the bottle contained. "Have you far to go?" asked Sharpe. "Why, yes, ’tis another seven miles to my cottage in the woods." "Then stay with us an hour until the moon shall rise and clear away the goblins of the Schwarzwald," urged Keane, who, by this time, had been able to examine the stranger’s face by the light of the fire, and to read it like a book.