out among the Saxons and Franks."

"The miserable fellows!" exclaimed old Jochem. "Faith, they have long
talked about Suabian stupidities! They shall see that a Suabian can be a
sly bird too when it is necessary."

"And keep always to the right, my Jochem, for the last tracks of this
Schrimbs or Peppel are headed that way," said the young man, standing up
and giving the old man a cordial parting handshake.

"Always to the right, of course," replied the latter. He handed over to
the other his hunting-bag, which was stuffed full, and which up to now
he had been carrying, lifted his hat and went off, following a side-path
at the right, down toward the region where, in the distance, one could
see towering up one of the steeples mentioned in the foregoing chapter.

The young man, on the other hand, went directly down toward the Oberhof.
He had taken perhaps a hundred steps when he heard somebody running
behind him and panting. He turned around and saw that his old companion
was hurrying after him.

"There was one more thing I wanted to ask and beg of you," the latter
cried. "Now that you are alone and left to yourself, get rid of your
gun; for you certainly won't hit anything and, sure as death, you will
have a mishap again, as you almost did not long ago when you fired at
the hare and came very near killing the child."

"Yes, it is damnable to be always firing at things and never hitting
them," said the young man. "But, truly, I'll put restraint on myself, no
matter how hard it may be to do it, and not a single shot shall fly out
of these barrels as long as you are away from me."

The old man begged him for the gun, but the young man refused to give it
up, saying that, without a gun, it would surely cost no self-restraint
to refrain from shooting, and that his method of procedure would then
lose all its merit.

"That is very true," replied the old man, and, without bidding his
companion a second good-by, inasmuch as the first one still held good,
he went back reassured, along the path which had been pointed out to
him.

The young man stood still, rested the gun on the ground, thrust the
ramrod into the barrel, and said:

"It will be difficult to get the charge out, and yet it can't stay in."
With that he tossed the gun over his shoulder and walked in the
direction of the Justice's oak grove. Just before he got there a drove
of heath fowl started up from a narrow strip of borderland, flapping
their wings and scre