"Yes, I was scared to death almost. I thought the old man of the mountains had come for me. I had been to market to sell my little wooden-clocks, and near this very place the huge grey phantom bird swooped down, then circled round and round and disappeared there, over there!" and the peasant, his eyes almost starting out of his head with terror, pointed away to the east. "Bah! It was no bird, it was an aeroplane, Hans. You should not have been frightened," exclaimed Keane, who had been taking particular note of the direction in which the mysterious machine had disappeared. "Yes, a ghost-aeroplane!" iterated the Schwarzwalder. "There has never been anything like it before." "Did anybody else see it?" queried Sharpe, passing the bottle once again to Hans, who stayed but a moment to wipe his lips with his sleeve, and to take another deep drink of the wine. "Ja, it was seen by Jacob Stendahl the same night, not far from this very place." "And who is Jacob Stendahl?" asked Keane. "He is the woodcutter whose cottage is down by the stream, two miles away. That path leads to his house. He was terrified; he said it was an evil omen, and next morning his little Gretchen died." "And what happened to you, Hans?" asked Sharpe. "That same night my sow farrowed, and all the litter were dead next morning," replied the peasant gravely. A deep silence followed this last remark, and the Schwarzwalder brooded over his misfortune, and lamented to himself the loss of his fine litter of young pigs. The two airmen felt certain now that Hans had really seen the mysterious aeroplane, and they plied him with a dozen further questions as to the noise it made in passing, and the speed at which it travelled, and whether anyone else had seen or heard of it. To some of their questions Hans could give no coherent answer. He said, however, that very few people lived in this part of the forest, and parts of it were seldom or never trodden by human foot. He had spoken to one or two about it, and they also had either seen or heard of it from someone else, and the general opinion amongst the Schwarzwalders in that part, was, that it was one of the dead German airmen, whose spirit came to visit the spot in a ghost-aeroplane. "Which of the German aces is it, then, that revisits this place, do they think?" asked Keane. "Some say that it is the ghost of Immelmann, who used to come here before the war to hunt the wild boar; others say that it is the spirit of Richthofen, but I cannot say," replied Hans. On the question of speed and noise, however, the peasant declared that he was certain. "It must have been a ghost-aeroplane," he said, "because it was silent, and its speed was like the passing of a spirit when it leaves the body." A deep silence followed these words, but at the end of a few minutes Hans, pointing to the east, said:-- "Look, friends, the moon is rising already. It is getting lighter, and I must go."