by degrees
she became more subdued and listened more intently. Suddenly Robber Father
turned toward Abbot Hans and shook his clenched fist in his face. "You
miserable monk! did you come here to coax from me my wife and children?
Don't you know that I am an outlaw and may not leave the forest?"

Abbot Hans looked him fearlessly in the eyes. "It is my purpose to get a
letter of ransom for you from Archbishop Absalon," said he. He had hardly
finished speaking when the robber and his wife burst out laughing. They
knew well enough the kind of mercy a forest robber could expect from
Bishop Absalon!

"Oh, if I get a letter of ransom from Absalon," said Robber Father, "then
I'll promise you that never again will I steal so much as a goose."

The lay brother was annoyed with the robber folk for daring to laugh at
Abbot Hans, but on his own account he was well pleased. He had seldom seen
the Abbot sitting more peaceful and meek with his monks at Oevid than he
now sat with this wild robber folk.

Suddenly Robber Mother rose. "You sit here and talk, Abbot Hans," she
said, "so that we are forgetting to look at the forest. Now I can hear,
even in this cave, how the Christmas bells are ringing."

The words were barely uttered when they all sprang up and rushed out. But
in the forest it was still dark night and bleak winter. The only thing
they marked was a distant clang borne on a light south wind.

"How can this bell ringing ever awaken the dead forest?" thought Abbot
Hans. For now, as he stood out in the winter darkness, he thought it far
more impossible that a summer garden could spring up here than it had
seemed to him before.

When the bells had been ringing a few moments, a sudden illumination
penetrated the forest; the next moment it was dark again, and then the
light came back. It pushed its way forward between the stark trees, like a
shimmering mist. This much it effected: The darkness merged into a faint
daybreak. Then Abbot Hans saw that the snow had vanished from the ground,
as if some one had removed a carpet, and the earth began to take on a
green covering. Then the ferns shot up their fronds, rolled like a
bishop's staff. The heather that grew on the stony hills and the
bog-myrtle rooted in the ground moss dressed themselves quickly in new
bloom. The moss-tufts thickened and raised themselves, and the spring
blossoms shot upward their swelling buds, which already had a touch of
color.

Abbot Hans' heart beat f