back!' Before Klaus was out of bed
again, he resolved to have a trial, and, on the very next day, humbly to
present himself to his godfather, if that great personage would deign
him an interview. He had to go to the wood for sticks, and time and
place were both favourable to a meeting with the spirit.

"The road to the wood lay hard by the Dwarf's well. Klaus, arriving
there, reined his horse up, and looked upon the spring with profoundly
cogitative eyes. It was clear and still. Pearly bright the water
ascended from the rent basaltic bottom, and rippled in a small
thread-like rill through whispering rushes, across meadows and fields,
until it reached the village.

"'Now, this is the strangest well!' quoth Klaus, knocking out the ashes
from his short stump of a pipe--'always humming and brumming when I take
my way by it--and when I have passed it, it is just as though I had
loaded on another hundred-weight. The poor thing regularly gasps, and
plants her hoof as if she were pulling the church after her. Now, wo-ho,
Whiteface!--wo-ho!"

As Klaus spoke, the horse snorted, gasped, and stamped, without making
any way. It was as though the devil had tied a hair about the spokes.
After fearful struggling and long agony, the wood was at length reached.
Klaus fell manfully to work. A sheaf of young trees were presently down
before his axe. In the haste of the felling, he cut down some shrubbery,
of no use in the manufacture of twirling-sticks, but trees and shrubs
were heaped together on his cart; he stopped his pipe, and with
provision at least for the next week, he gaily pushed towards home.

"It was a fine warm evening of autumn. The moon stood in the cloudless
heavens above the blue hills, and the rich region lay in her splendour.
Klaus hummed a careless tune; smoked and hummed, hummed and smoked. In
the swampy marsh meadows to the right and left of him, number of social
frogs joined in the concert; the streams were steaming in the valleys,
and silvery mists strayed, catching the radiance, along the mountain
forests.

"'Wo-ho, Blaesse!' growled Klaus, as his favourite began to snort and
caracole. 'No shying, Whiteface! It is only the night-fog bubbling up a
bit. 'Twon't singe thy poor bones, wo-ho!' and then he cracked his whip,
and made it sing about the ears of the mulish beast. At the same moment,
a bright flame sprang up before him--but only like a flash of lightning;
for in an instant all was again hushed, dim, and