h how inhuman it was to regard
a human being as a mere puppet, and to have no further concern about
him, after one has had his sport out of him. His whole heart was moved
with feeling as he spoke. Roland disdainfully threw back his head.

"Why do you make no reply to me?" Eric asked.

"Ah! I had no idea that you would preach to me like all the rest."

Attracted by the beauty of the boy, and his bold spirit, Eric had come
to the determination to devote himself to him, and now, for an instant,
he experienced a revulsion of feeling, but only to devote himself with
fresh earnestness to his resolve. He would soften and thaw out this
soul, naturally hard, or made so by the training it had received.

Roland went up quietly to Eric, and requested him to ride out with him.
They rode together to the village. But Roland could not be induced to
visit the dwarf, whom Eric found lying on the bed, moaning and
groaning. When he arrived at the house of the huntsman, he did not find
Roland, who had gone with Devil into the woods upon the height.

The huntsman greeted Eric less submissively; he lifted his cap, indeed,
but only to cock it a little one side; he approached him in that
familiar way so common on the upper Rhine, where it always seems as if
one would touch glasses, and make himself friendly with you.

"Captain," he asked, "have you settled matters?"

"No."

"May I be permitted to say something to you?"

"If it is something good, why not?"

"That's just as one takes it. That one, down there"--he pointed
with his thumb back to the villa--"that one is buying up the whole
Rhine-land. But see you, that fox-hound there--"

"Stop," at once exclaimed Eric, proceeding to point out, in a very
decisive manner, that he had no right to speak so to him, and about
another person.

Eric was aware that he had not properly preserved his own dignity, or
this man would not have been able to approach him so familiarly; and he
was now more severe in repelling this forwardness than he intended. The
huntsman only puffed the more vigorously at his pipe, and then said,--

"Yes, yes, you are the one to seize the man down there by the throat,
and I see that you are too smart for me. You wish to get off from
thanking me; I want no thanks, and no pay."

He muttered to himself, that everything which came near the rich man
was always spoilt.

Eric must undo somewhat the impression he had made, for the huntsman
was the only one who could riva