nd round with
huge bundles protruding on every side. It was the hatter from the next
town, bringing for the holidays, a collection of newly dressed
three-cornered hats into the village.

"What is going on here?" asked the little man.

"We are looking for a child--Joseph--he has disappeared."

"How old is the child?"

"Six years old."

"I met a fine boy with a rosy face, and fair curly hair."

"Yes, yes, that must have been Joseph; for God's sake tell me where he
is," said Martina, rushing up to the man so eagerly, that all his hats
tumbled down into the snow.

"Gently, gently! I have not got him in my bundles. Below there, in the
wood, I all at once met a boy; I asked him: 'What are you doing here
alone, and night beginning to fall? where are you going to?' 'To meet
my father, who is coming up this road; did you not see him?' 'What is
your father like?' 'Big and strong.' 'I have not seen him--come home
with me, child.' 'No, I am coming home with my father.' I took hold of
the child, and tried to bring him with me by force, but he being wild
and obstinate, gave me the slip, and darted off like a deer, and I
heard him still calling, far into the wood, 'Father! father!'"

"That was certainly Joseph; for God's sake let us go after him."

"We will all go--all!"

"Stop!" said Schilder-David, coming forward; "hatter, will you go with
us?"

"I cannot, for I am so weary, I can scarcely set one foot before the
other; besides, it would be of no use, for it is more than an hour
since I saw the child; I stopped for some time at the Meierhof; and who
knows where the child may be now; I can tell you exactly where I met
him--in the Otterswald Wood, close to the river, where the large
spreading beech stands. It is the only very large tree there, and you
all know it."

"Very well," said Schilder-David, striving to be composed; "I shall
take good care to break a branch off that tree, to make Joseph remember
it."

"No! no, you are not to beat him!" exclaimed Martina--she did not like
to say, that this was the very same beech tree, where Adam had spoken
to her for the first time; and perhaps her child might at that very
moment be lying under it--frozen to death.

"It is night, and we can see nothing, and the snow is falling faster
than ever," cried Haespele; "fetch torches, ring the alarm bell; we must
ask the Pastor to let us do so; come straight to the Parsonage."

Martina, however, was taken home, and when she saw the