e is a story of the very strange adventure which a young Black
Forester once had with these forest spirits, and which story I will now
relate.

In the Black Forest there lived a widow, one Mistress Barbara Munk; her
husband had been a charcoal burner, and after his death she brought up
her son, a lad of sixteen, to the same calling. Peter Munk, a slenderly
built young fellow, took to the business as a matter of course, because
he had never seen his father do aught else but sit by his smoking
charcoal-kiln, or, blackened and begrimed, travel to the towns to sell
his charcoal.

Now, a charcoal-burner has a great deal of time for meditation on
things as they are, and on himself; and as Peter Munk sat before his
kiln, the dark trees around him and the heavy silence of the forest
stirred his heart to sorrow and to vague longings. He felt grieved and
vexed at something; but what that something was he could not tell. At
last, the cause of his discontent was revealed to him: it was--his
position in the world.

"A grimy, lonely charcoal-burner!" he exclaimed to himself. "What a
wretched existence! Look at the glassblowers, the watchmakers, even the
musicians who play on Sunday evenings--how they are respected! And I,
Peter Munk, though cleaned up and dressed in my father's best jerkin
with the silver buttons, and with my brand-new red stockings on, if
someone follows me and asks himself 'Who can that slim young fellow
be?'--admiring my stockings and easy gait, no sooner does he pass me
and chance to look round, than he exclaims, 'Pooh, it's only that
charcoal-burning Peter Munk after all.'"

The raftsmen on the other side of the forest were also objects of his
envy. When these giants came over to his side of the forest, in all
their glory of apparel, their buttons, chains and buckles representing
great weight and wealth of silver; when they stood with outstretched
legs looking on at the dancing, swearing Dutch oaths, and smoking
yard-long Rhenish pipes like the grandest Mynheers, each of these
handsome raftsmen appeared to him to be a perfect representation of a
really happy man. And when one of these lucky fellows chanced to dive
his hands into his pockets, bringing forth whole handsful of silver
thalers, and throwing them down on the dice table, five gulden here,
ten there, Peter became well-nigh distracted, and slunk dolefully back
to his hut; for on many a festival he had seen one or other of these
woodsmen play away mo