indefatigably, till the meadow was mown from end to end, and then he
danced back to the Wenger wedding with the fiddler on his back. There
is a proverb, that anything may be stolen, except a mill-stone
and a bar of red-hot iron; but Speidel-Roettmann did once steal
a mill-stone, or at least displace it. Wishing to play a trick to the
forest-miller, he rolled the mill-stone one night half-way up the hill.
Speidel-Roettmann had two sons, Vincent and Adam; the eldest, Vincent,
was not particularly strong, but as sharp and spiteful as a lynx; a
quality he inherited from his mother, for the Roettmanns, though untamed
and fierce, are not malicious. It seems that Vincent tormented the
wood-cutters like a slave-driver. One day he was killed by the falling
of a tree. It was said, and the former clergyman always declared it was
so, that the wood-cutters had killed him on purpose. Since that day the
mother, who never, was of a kindly nature, has become a perfect dragon,
and would gladly poison every one. She is the only person who cordially
hates my husband, for she wished him to question closely every dying
peasant to whom he might be summoned, whether he had anything to
confess with regard to Vincent's murder. The tree that caused Vincent's
death lay long untouched in the wood, but one day the Roettmaennin gave
orders that its branches should be lopped off. She hid herself,
unperceived by the wood cutters, in order to watch them, and to listen
to all they said, but she got no information. Speidel-Roettmann, as the
trunk was the finest tree in the forest, wished to send it floating
down the Rhine, for he said,--'a tree is a tree, and money is money;
why should the tree be left to rot on the ground, because it chanced to
cause Vincent's death?' His wife, however, was of a different opinion.
She collected the branches into a great heap, to which she set fire,
and burned the clothes of the dead man in it, shouting out, 'May those
who murdered my Vincent, burn hereafter like these clothes in this
bonfire!' Six horses and ten oxen tried to drag the tree into the
courtyard of the house, but they could only move it a little way, for
the roads are not good enough to admit of so huge a tree being dragged
up hill. It was, therefore, sawn into three pieces, and these three
monstrous logs are still lying in the court, close to the door. The
Roettmaennin always declares that the tree is waiting till a gallows and
a funeral pile are required, to