In the evening of the second day he had arrived in a great wood, which extended towards Fulda. The forest seemed to stretch itself out endlessly before him. It was already nearly dark; and a violent wind against which he had to labour, bent the tall and gloomy pines, which groaned awfully. Full of melancholy he wandered forward; the memory of the past came over him with subduing power; and he almost wished that one of the mighty trees might be dashed down by the tempest, and bury him in its fall. He began to sing a song, in order to chase away those painful thoughts,--when, as he turned an angle of the path, a rough voice cried "Halt!" and at once three men sprung out of the bush. The coarse hunting-garb, the pistols and hangers with which they were armed, and the disguised faces, left him in no doubt that they were some of the gang that kept that part of the country in disquiet. The student feared them not; fear had never been any part of his nature, and least of all now, when life to him was made indifferent by despair. "Leave me alone," said he, "I have nothing for you." "But with your permission," said one of the robbers, "we will make a rather nearer acquaintance with your knapsack." "With all my heart," answered the student quietly, handing over to them the knapsack, at the same time that he filled his pipe, and asked one of them for a light, as he had himself lost his fire-apparatus. He seated himself to rest on a block of stone by the side of the road, and requested the robbers not to detain him too long, as he had yet far to go to his night's quarters. They could not refrain from a laugh at the _sang froid_ of the student. "You seem to me sad fellows," said Schwartzkopf, "that you don't understand your business better; at thirty paces distance you might have seen very well, that you would get nothing, from me." "Be silent, hound!" cried one of them, "or in a moment we will cut thy throat." "And a right noble deed too," added the student, "for three men to cut the throat of one. If you were not miserable Philistines, I should be obliged to call upon one of you to give satisfaction for that word, hound!" "By all the devils, he is right, Heiner," said another; "he has a right to it, since he has shown himself so brave, and as there is nothing in the knapsack, except a few miserable articles of covering." "Does the fellow think I'm afraid of him?" cried Heiner.