e; but
now every hair on his head stands on end; he remembers that in bygone
days men were quite as wise as at present, and they believed it all.
"Here he comes! Forgive me for not believing a word of it till now. I
will--" Speidel-Roettmann rushes along the path into the wood, and
throws himself down on the ground on his face, that the Wild Huntsman
may gallop over him without throttling him. So he lies still and hears
the fiends rush past. He clutches the snowy moss with his hand, and the
moss does not give way. It is a comfort that something in the world
still holds fast. Hold on! hold on! or you may be in a moment lifted up
in the air, and placed on the top of a tree, or who knows where? and
your face twisted entirely round, and you must go about with it in that
fashion as long as you live. And he feels as if he were mocked, and
some one said to him, "Is not this wood your own property? but in spite
of all your foresters, and all your keepers, you cannot prevent the
Wild Huntsman galloping through it. Do you hear a child's voice? do you
know that voice?"

Speidel-Roettmann has entirely lost his head--the snow in which he had
buried his face melts from the warmth of his breath, but something
melts also in his hard heart; and face to face with death, he calls out
from the snowy moss, "Joseph!" as if that word had the power to save
him. "I solemnly vow I will," he goes on muttering to himself. It has
suddenly flashed across his thoughts, that there lived a child on earth
to whom he had been guilty of great injustice, and that it is for this
he hears such groans and cries in the air. He wishes to call back his
son, who is in turn striving to recall his son. This is like a chain
attached to another chain, and so the links go on.

"I yield! set me free! keep the child!" With these words he at last
ventured to raise his head a little. The noise and shouts and cries
sounded now further away.

"Who are you? who are you?" cries suddenly a figure, seizing him
roughly, not like a man, but like an evil spirit, or the claws of a
wild beast, so savage is the grasp.

"I am a miserable sinner! I am the Roettmann--let me go; be merciful!"

"So, I have got hold of you at last!" exclaimed the figure, and knelt
down on his breast. "You shall die, for you have killed my grandson,
and disowned him, and left him to want and misery."

"How? what? is it you, David?"

"Yes, you shall know first who is going to split your head with thi