for fowl from morn till eve, and if they pleased, might roam at will in
a canoe and destroy the swarms of winged inhabitants of the fen: no one
would interrupt them.

[Footnote 39: A hunting match in which the vassals of the landlord form
a ring of great extent and advancing and narrowing the circle by
degrees, drive the animals together towards a place where they can be
conveniently shot. (Walter Scott.)]

Some ancestor of Topandy had given the peasantry permission to cut peat
in the bog, but the present proprietor had discontinued this industry,
because it completely defiled the place: the ditches caused by the old
diggings became swampy morasses, so that neither man nor beast could
pass among them without danger.

Anyone with good eyes could still descry from the castle tower that
enormous hay-rick which they had filled up ten or twelve years before in
the middle of the marsh; it was just in the height of summer and they
had mown the hillocks in the marsh; then followed a mild winter, and
neither man nor sleigh could reach it. The hay was lost, it was not
worth the trouble of getting; so they had left it there, and it was
already brown, its top moss-covered and overgrown with weeds.

Topandy would often say to his hunting comrades, who, looking through a
telescope, remarked the hay-rick in the marsh:

"Someone must be living in that rick; often of an evening have I seen
smoke coming from it. It might be an excellent place for a dwelling.
Rain cannot penetrate it, in winter it keeps out the cold, in summer the
heat. I would live in it myself."

They often tried to reach it while out hunting; but every attempt was a
failure; the ground about the rick was so clogged with turfy peat that
to approach it by boat was impossible, and one who trusted himself on
foot came so near being engulfed that his companions could scarcely haul
him out of the bog with a rope. Finally they acquiesced in the idea that
here within distinct view of the castle, some wild creature, born of
man, had made his dwelling among the wolves and other wild beasts; a
creature whom it would be a pity to disturb, as he never interfered with
anybody.

The most enterprising hunter, therefore, even in broad daylight avoided
the neighborhood of the suspicious hay-rick; who then would be so
audacious as to dare to seek it out by night when the circled moon
foretelling rain, was flooding the marsh-land with a silvery, misty
radiance, adding a new terror