d the gigantic forest trees that slumbered
round, opening here and there in dusky vistas, and breaking in front into
detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream of romance.

It would have been the very spot in which to read a volume of German
folk-lore, and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest
seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves
and goblins.

As I sat here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches
of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure
in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb
of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His
face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes
black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under
his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking
person came stumping and jerking along toward me, whisking his stick now
and then viciously in the air, and giving his fell of hair a short shake,
like a wild bull preparing to attack.

I stood up involuntarily with a sense of fear and surprise, almost fancying
I saw in that wooden-legged old soldier, the forest demon who haunted Der
Freischuetz.

So he approached shouting--

'Hollo! you--how came you here? Dost 'eer?'

And he drew near panting, and sometimes tugging angrily in his haste at his
wooden leg, which sunk now and then deeper than was convenient in the sod.
This exertion helped to anger him, and when he halted before me, his dark
face smirched with smoke and dust, and the nostrils of his flat drooping
nose expanded and quivered as he panted, like the gills of a fish; an
angrier or uglier face it would not be easy to fancy.

'Ye'll all come when ye like, will ye? and do nout but what pleases
yourselves, won't you? And who'rt thou? Dost 'eer--who _are_ ye, I say; and
what the deil seek ye in the woods here? Come, bestir thee!'

If his wide mouth and great tobacco-stained teeth, his scowl, and loud
discordant tones were intimidating, they were also extremely irritating.
The moment my spirit was roused, my courage came.

'I am Miss Ruthyn of Knowl, and Mr. Silas Ruthyn, your master, is my
uncle.'

'Hoo!' he exclaimed more gently, 'an' if Silas be thy uncle thou'lt be come
to live wi' him, and thou'rt she as come overnight--eh?'

I made no answer, but I believe I looked both angrily an