our provisions and empty our
flasks. When the moon is up we will follow the trail again, and unless
the old hag is the foul fiend himself, ten to one we shall find her dead
and stiff with cold against the foot of a tree, for nothing can live
after such a tremendous tramp in weather like this. Sebalt is the best
walker in the Black Forest, and he would not have stood it. Come, Fritz,
what is your opinion?"

"I am not so mad as to think differently. Besides, I am perishing with
hunger!"

"Well, let us start again."

He took the lead and passed into a close and narrow glen between two
precipitous faces of rock. The fir-trees met over our heads; under our
feet ran a mere thread of the stream, and from time to time some ray from
above was dimly reflected in the depths below and glinted with a dull
leaden light.

The darkness was now such that I thought it prudent to drop my bridle on
Rappel's neck. The steps of our horses on the slippery gravel awoke
strange discordant sounds like the screaming of monkeys at play. The
echoes from rock to rock caught up and repeated every sound, and in the
distance a tiny space of deep blue widened as we advanced; it was the
issue from the glen.

"Fritz," said Sperver, "we are in the bed of the Tunkelbach. This is the
wildest spot in the Black Forest. The end is a pit called La Marmite du
Grand Gueulard, the muckle-mouthed giant's kettle. In the spring, when
the snow is melting, the Tunkelbach hurls all its waters into it, a depth
of two hundred feet. There is an awful uproar; the waters dash down and
then splash up again and fall in spray on all the hills around. Sometimes
it even fills the Roche Creuse, but just now it must be as dry as a
powder-flask."

Whilst I was listening to Gideon's explanations I was at the same time
meditating upon this dark and fearful glen, and I reflected that the
instinct which attracts the brutes into such retreats as these, far from
the light of heaven, away from everything bright and cheerful, must
partake of the nature of remorse. Those animals which love the open
sunshine--the goat aloft upon a high conspicuous peak, the horse flying
across the wide plain, the dog capering round his master, the bird bathed
in sunlight--all breathe joy and happiness; they bask, and sing, and
rejoice in dancing and delight. The kid nibbling the tender grass under
the shade of the great trees is as poetic an object as the shelter that
it loves; the fierce boar is as r