walk: many crossed his
path and jostled against him, but he cared not; he heard the sweet voice
plainer and plainer, like the soft murmuring of the cushat dove in the
early summer, and he would follow where it led. Hitherto his pathway had
been smooth, and he had hastened along it; but this did not last, for now
it narrowed almost to a line, and ran straight between two horrible
pitfalls; so he paused for a moment; but the roaring of a lion was behind
him, and forward he pressed. It was a sore passage for Irrgeist, for the
whole ground was strewed with thorns, which pierced his feet at every
step, and the sparks from the fire-pits flew ever round him, and now and
then fell in showers over him. Neither did he hear now the pleasant
sound of the voice of kindness; whether it were that it had died away, he
knew not, or whether it were that the crackling and roaring of the fierce
flames, and the voice of the beasts behind, and his own groans and
crying, drowned its soft music, so that he heard it not.

I had looked at him until I could bear it no more; for the path seemed to
grow narrower and narrower; the flames from the two pits already almost
touched; and I could not endure to see, as I feared I should, the little
one, whom I had watched, become the prey of their devouring fierceness.
So, with a bitter groan for Irrgeist, I turned me back to the road to see
how it fared with Furchtsam and Gehulfe.

They had fallen far behind the others from the first. Poor little
Furchtsam had a trembling tottering gait; and as he walked, he looked on
this side and on that, as if every step was dangerous. This led him
often to look off his book of light, and then it would shut up its
leaves, and then his little lamp grew dimmer and dimmer, and his feet
stumbled, and he trembled so, that he almost dropped his staff out of his
hands. Yet still he kept the right path, only he got along it very
slowly and with pain.

Whether it was that Gehulfe was too tender spirited to leave him, or why
else, I know not, but he kept close by the little trembler, and seemed
ever waiting to help him. Many a time did he catch him by the hand when
he was ready to fall, and speak to him a word of comfort, when without it
he would have sunk down through fear. So they got on together, and now
they came to the part of the pathway which the evil enchantress haunted.
She used all her skill upon them, and brought up before their eyes all
the visions she cou