do?
and I believe you will yet marry Adam to Martina, and then we shall
remain happily where we are."

The brother scarcely liked to interrupt his sister's reverie, but at
last he asked, "Who is the fierce Roettmaennin, and who are Adam and
Martina?"

"Sit down here beside me, and I will tell you. I could not sleep if I
were to go to bed, till I know that Otto is under shelter."

CHAPTER III.
THE FIERCE ROeTTMAeNNER.

"There is a fierce, savage race of men in these mountains, who are
almost fiends. Many a strange tale is told of these wild Roettmaenner."

"Let me hear them."

"They are great rough boors, and they pride themselves on the stories
related for generations back of their prodigious strength, and as they
are wealthy, they can do pretty much what they please. The father of
the Roettmann, whose wife Otto is gone to-night to visit, is reported to
have had so powerful a voice, that once when he shouted to a forester,
the man staggered back. His chief pleasure consisted in rolling up into
balls, the tin plates used at dinner at different inns. The present
Roettmann, when he went to a dance, was in the habit of stuffing into
his long pockets a dozen of the heavy iron axes, used for splitting
wood, called _Speidel_ by the country people, so that every one got out
of his way, and left him ample space to dance. His greatest delight was
to dance for twenty-four hours without stopping; this was only
amusement to him, and in the pauses between the dances, he drank quart
after quart of wine unceasingly. In order to ascertain, however, how
much he had drunk, and what he had to pay, he tore off a button each
time, first off his red waistcoat, and then off his coat, and redeemed
them at the end of the evening from the landlord. His old father, with
the stentorian voice, once forbad him to remain all day at a wedding at
Wenger, but, on the contrary, enjoined on him to mow down a grass
meadow in the valley of Otterzwang. The Roettmaenner have always enforced
the strictest discipline among themselves. The obedient son followed
his father's injunctions. Danced like mad all night, and in the
morning, the loud voiced father, coming into the meadow, heard music,
'What is that? a man mowing, and he looks so strange?' The father comes
nearer, sees his son mowing busily according to his orders, but
carrying a basket on his back, and in the basket a fiddler, playing