With that he disappeared, and I hurried to the water’s edge, but could only pick up one or two pearls that he had let drop; nor could I find any more. This was not enough, so I determined to follow him, and repeated the charm, making sure it would carry me into some hidden treasure-cave. But I had hardly finished the words before I found myself in a strange city, where I saw not a soul I knew, and could not understand a word any one said. I am a bold man, but I am bound to say this dismayed me, and I wandered about till nightfall, wondering how I should keep from starvation. I was beginning to despair, when, on one of the bridges of which the city was full, I met the same man whom I had seen that morning in my native mountains. He could understand me, I knew, and I spoke to him and implored him to help me.
“‘I know thee, and thy history,’ said the man, and his face was ill to look upon. ‘Thou art a fool, and wouldst have been a thief. Wherefore should I help thee?’
“‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘have pity on me this once, and know it was but love that made me covetous and reckless. I am a fool, in truth; but I am also, surely, a countryman of thine, and in a wretched case. I pray thee, send me back to my own land.’
“At last he was moved, and took me home with him to a splendid house, where the very bed I slept upon was hung with tassels of pure gold. And all this treasure he had got out of our Morgenbrots Valley. He told me to go to bed and sleep in peace, and that on rising in the morning I was to take water and wash my hands, saying:
and I should at once find myself in our Hartz Mountains again. I did as he bade me, and all came to pass as he said. Only, when I looked at my face in the spring, and when I questioned the folk in the villages hard by, I found that not one night, as I supposed, but many years, had passed since I left the valley. Home, relations—and bride, I had lost all. I knew it was vain to return here, yet I have come all the same.”
“Upon my soul, ’tis a worse punishment than thou didst deserve!” cried Master Ran. “But come home now, at any rate, and greet my daughter.”
“Nay,” replied the wanderer, taking up his staff again, “there is no place there for me, and I had best go on my way. I shall never be anything but a homeless man now.”
XVII
THE MAIDEN’S ROCK
On the left bank of the Elbe, near Pirna, stands a lofty crag, called the “Maiden’s Rock.” One part of it, in fact, is shaped like a maiden’s figure—and this is the reason why:—
It seems that, a thousand years ago and more, there dwelt in the village of Pfaffendorf, close by, a terrible old witch, who went by the name of Mother Gundelheind. No one dared go near her or enter her house, but those who had ventured to peep through the window in her absence declared that a blue flame danced upon her hearthstone, above which some devilish brew hung boiling, and that a black fox crouched whining beside this uncanny fire. Many a belated passer-by had seen her at night, flashing through the air upon her broomstick; and sometimes she had a companion, a fiery dragon who flew by her side, and brought her great store of red, molten gold, that he dropped from his wings before her threshold. It is needless to say that she was never at home on Walpurgis-night, the great meeting time of all the witches and evil spirits; but, indeed, she was oftener abroad than within doors, for when she was not revelling with her own kind, she was busy working evil spells upon her neighbours, bewitching their wives, their children, and their cattle. Plenty of people had seen her at it, but there was nothing to be done; complaints and lamentations were of no avail against her stony heart, and punishment was not to be thought of, for her revenge would have been such as no one in the land dared brave; and besides, how can any one get the better of a witch so mighty, that neither fire nor water have power over her? Yet her punishment awaited her, and she feared it, and had, in her great wickedness, found a way out of it, as she thought.
For there was another person who dwelt in that ill-famed cottage, and was in all ways the opposite of the terrible Mother Gundelheind. This was her young daughter Truda, and how she came by such a daughter none can tell; for Truda was as sweet as a May morning, and her hazel eyes had the look that the angels wear, in the church pictures. Instead of the old woman’s horny, blackened hide, Truda had a skin as fair and soft as cream; instead of her mother’s harsh and grizzled locks, she had long, silky tresses, the colour of a newly ripened chestnut; and instead of the witch’s cruel, rasping speech, a voice as gentle and musical as the ringdove’s. And her mind and soul were as beautiful as her body, so that every one loved her, and looked after her with friendly smiles, while they turned their eyes from the wicked mother and her ill-omened glance. To be sure, this made it hard for Truda to have any of the friends or the pastimes befitting her age and sweet nature; for none would cross the threshold of her mother’s house, nor would she suffer her daughter to enter one of the neighbours’ dwellings. She kept Truda fast at home, sewing, washing, or spinning; for it can easily be believed that the old witch herself had no time or mind for such a wholesome work, and the housekeeping would have gone to ruin but for Truda.
Nor was this all: the capricious creature would have her child as pious as she herself was godless, and made her learn her Catechism, and go to church on Sundays, and fast, and do penance, with such zeal that the poor child was sometimes quite worn-out. Never a day’s merrymaking did she get; never might she join the dance upon the village-green, or wander by the river in the moonlight, like the other young folk; for even when her mother was from home, she could watch and spy upon her by means of a magic mirror, in which the old witch could see at her pleasure all that was happening at home, or, indeed, in any place she chose to think of.
Now, it may be thought that the old woman was not so graceless but that she still had some lingering care for her child’s well-being—but this, alas! was not the cause of her watchfulness, for which she had only too horrid a reason. It is needless to say that this wicked creature had long been given, body and soul, to the Evil One; she knew that the day would come when he would surely claim his prey, and, as has been said, she feared her punishment, and was ready to pay any price to escape, and to be allowed to go on freely in her wickedness. Now, upon one of those midnight wanderings, during which all dark secrets were unveiled to her, she had happened to find out that the Prince of the lower regions was not so particular as to the fashion in which his debtors paid their score, and that he would be willing to take her little daughter Truda in her place, so long as the girl was innocent of any sort of wrong-doing. And this was why Mother Gundelheind scolded and spied, and used every means in her power to bring up her daughter a model of pious perfection.
She had succeeded pretty well, to be sure, and her bad example, far from doing any harm, seemed rather to have driven the girl in an opposite direction; but there was one thing that had so far escaped the old hag’s notice. She could not choose but let Truda go into the village sometimes—to market, for instance—because no one would have any dealings with the witch herself, if they could help it, while to Truda they gave their freshest fruit and richest cream. And again, she must go to church, for that her mother dared not let her miss. So it came to pass that Truda made a few friends, and one especial admirer, Wippold the forester, who spent half his life in planning stolen meetings with her, or in waiting to catch a glance from those hazel eyes as she went demurely by, prayer-book in hand. Old Mother Gundelheind had by this time got into the habit of trusting Truda, perhaps over much; but even witches will be caught napping sometimes, and this was the time of the Walpurgis Feast, and her head was full of other matters. So it came to pass that she forgot, once or twice, to look into her magic mirror, and never knew that Truda held tryst with the forester upon the rock overhanging the Elbe, to which the country-folk sometimes climbed up on their Sunday rambles. For the witch’s harsh and unnatural behaviour had borne fruit at last, and had driven even the sweet, confiding Truda into underhand ways, because they were the only means of bringing a little relief into a life that would else have been nearly unbearable.
But it was hard work to keep anything from the old hag for long; and presently she began to notice that Truda was wont to sit dreaming by the hearth of an evening, while her spindle lay idle beside her, and her wheel stood silent in a corner. Then the witch grew suspicious, and observed her more closely again; nor was it long before she spied out Wippold escorting the girl home from market one morning. He left her before they turned the corner of the cottage, to be sure, but as soon as Truda’s hand touched the latch, the old woman flew at her like the fury she was.
“What is this?” she screamed. “What good-for-nothing acquaintances hast thou been picking up, idle baggage that thou art? Never think to deceive me! If thou dost so much as give yon fellow a ‘good-day’ again, I will rather starve here at home with thee than suffer thee to set foot in the market!” And she flung herself down, quite out of breath, in her dark ingle-nook, muttering something about “running no such risks.”
Truda betook herself to her wheel, silent and bewildered, and ventured no word of self-defence. But that evening, as she sat gazing into the flame that flickered up with blue tongues from the blackened hearth-stone, she plucked up courage and asked—
“Why must I never speak to a man, mother, or have any dealings with the village-folk, as other maidens do?”
“Because men, and all human folk, are evil. Thou shalt speak to the man I shall choose for thee, and to no other,” rejoined the hag, with a grim chuckle.
“Have men wrought thee harm, then, that thou dost shun them so?” continued the girl. “Methinks the folk at market fear thee more than thou dost them. And yet there be some folk whose company thou dost seek, I have heard thee say, when thou goest forth on these long journeys. Whither dost thou go so far, mother, and wherefore?”
“Fine doings!” sputtered the old woman viciously. “Listening to evil spoken of thine own mother, and spying upon her! Little white-faced fool! what knowest thou of that which is fitting to be done? But have a care, or thou wilt find out something of my power, and of how I can punish when I have a mind.”
Truda sank into terrified silence, and brooded in her own heart over the mysteries of the dark fate which she seemed unable to escape.
But she would escape it yet! She would not give up her love, and everything that made life happy, without a struggle! Only her weapons must be guile and secrecy, and she was but little skilled in the use of them, poor child. For days and weeks she worked and drudged at home, to quiet her mother’s suspicions; only now and then, as she hurried along to get some few things they could not do without, she managed to give Wippold a sign that kept him quiet. At last, one Sunday, the old witch, afraid to keep her from her pious duties any more, and feeling sure that she had frightened her into obedience, bade the girl get ready to go to Mass; she herself would see her to the church door, though she might go no farther. Truda could not quite keep out of her face the joy which this order gave her, and her mother did not fail to notice the radiant gleam which lit up her eyes. She hurried away to get ready; and before the bell had ceased ringing, her mother had watched her run lightly up the steps and disappear into the church. Could she at that moment have seen through stone walls, she would have beheld her daughter reply to a sign made her by the young fellow who stood waiting behind one of the pillars and follow him out at the small north door, which was nearly opposite to the one by which she had gone in. And now, keeping close in the thickets, so as to be seen of no one, the pair of lovers hastened towards the lonely rock, where they were sure of a quiet hour together, and where Truda could unburden her heart of all its fears and sorrows, and hear from her lover that he would never rest till he had carried her away from her unhappy home.
Meanwhile the old witch had returned to her cottage, thinking over her daughter’s behaviour that morning. “I wonder why she was so overjoyed to go to church,” she mused; “it was not always her wont.” She could not get the matter out of her mind, and after a time she was so tormented by suspicion that she fetched out her mirror, and sprinkling some drops of magic water upon it, desired it to show her the spot where her daughter was.
Immediately there arose before her the picture of the lofty rock—its surface sparkled in the sunshine; down below, the blue Elbe wound along amid the meadows, and on a narrow green space near the top of the crag, and overshadowed by it, she saw the forms of the two lovers. Her Truda, the virtuous maiden, on whom she had staked all her hopes, was folded in the arms of the forester, while he pressed burning kisses upon her lips, and prayer-book and rosary lay forgotten at their feet.
Every drop of blood in the old hag’s veins tingled with fury, a hellish light gleamed in her sunken eyes, and seizing her witch’s staff in her hand, she went raging forth, and in the twinkling of an eye had rushed like a storm up the rocky ascent, and fallen upon the luckless lovers.
“Accursed child! and hast thou lied to me, and is this the Mass thou wentest forth to hear? And thou, thrice accursed fellow, it was an evil day for thee when thou camest a-wooing of Gundelheind’s daughter!”
And before the ill-fated man could so much as attempt to defend himself, the witch, suddenly grown to an immense height, and towering grimly above him, seized him in her huge horny hands and cast him down the cliff into the river below.
And in the twinkling of an eye had rushed like a storm up the rocky ascent, and fallen upon the luckless lovers.
Truda, white and cold with anguish, stood rooted to the spot, and now the raging fury sprang upon her also. “Now it is thy turn,” she hissed out. “Ah! hast thou lied, and blasphemed, and dallied here with thy lover? A pretty ransom thou art, and much that creditor of mine will care to get thee now! Hence go all my chances of safety! But at least thou, accursed creature, shalt never be a witness of my defeat!” And lifting the staff with which she wrought her wicked spells, she struck her daughter across the face with it. But Truda never felt the blow. Beneath her fiendish mother’s curse she had turned to stone; the rock folded her, as it were, in its inflexible arms, and to this day bears, as a witness of the terrible deed, the form of a maiden.
But where, as she fled through the night from his vengeance, the Arch-Enemy’s stroke fell upon Mother Gundelheind, that the legend forbears to say.
XVIII
THE WATER-SNAKE
Old Lisbeth sat by the fire and spun, but on the opposite side of the hearth her son Dietrich crouched idle, his cheek upon his hand, gazing into the embers. For many weeks he had been growing more and more silent and listless, and no one could tell what ailed him. Was it that Johanna, the maiden he was courting, had been cruel to him, or was something wrong with his work? His old mother looked across at him and wondered. Outside the wind was blowing, and brought plainly to their ears the sound of the river as it rushed through the valley towards the lake of Pöhlde, that the Hartz-folk call the Tumpensee. Now and then the blast rose to so shrill a pitch that you might have thought a voice was calling from afar; and when this happened, Dietrich would start from his seat and make as though he would rush from the house, but each time he checked himself, and sank with a shiver upon the bench again. At last Lisbeth could bear it no longer.
“What ails thee, son?” she cried. “Art thou bewitched, that a mere gust of wind can set thee all a-tremble?”
Dietrich was silent for a while, casting furtive glances toward door and window, as though he were afraid that his reply might call up some unwelcome sight. At last he answered in a whisper—
“I doubt I am, indeed, mother! Hast thou ever heard tell of voices rising from the river and the lake yonder? Or was any one drowned there these days, that one should see a gleam of red-gold hair beneath the water?”
Lisbeth turned pale.
“Heaven help us!” she exclaimed in a low voice, as though she, too, were afraid of being overheard, “do thou have nothing to do with the river-side or the banks of the lake, Dietrich. That is how men come by their death.”
“But knowest thou anything of it, mother? What is there to fear, if fear there be?” persisted the young man.
“What care I for such tales! Tales there are of spell-bound maidens who call for some one to deliver them, and of water-snakes, and such nonsense; the country is full of them, thou knowest as well as I. But there is no need to believe them,” continued Lisbeth hastily, as if fearing she had said too much. “Do thou take thy Johanna to wife, and bring her home; that will drive all such fancies from thy head.”
A look of pain crossed Dietrich’s face.
“Ah, Johanna!” he exclaimed, “if I could but turn my mind to thoughts of her! Yet I fear she has fancied me cold and neglectful of late.”
“Nay, nay, son,” his mother answered, “Johanna has eyes but for thee; trust my word for it. See, the storm is passing; do thou go over and bid her good-evening, and tell her that the old mother needs some more of that yarn she can spin so stoutly, and thinks she might even bring it over herself, and gladden this house with a sight of her face. There is a gloom hangs about it when she is away, and the sooner she lives with us for good, the better it will be.”
Dietrich took his cap from the peg and opened the door, but as he stood on the threshold, he turned to his mother once more.
“What if I should bring her to harm too?” he said, and was gone.
The old woman mused on by the hearth; her thoughts were not cheerful, for in her secret heart she firmly believed that some water-sprite had indeed bewitched her unlucky boy, but she put a bold face on it, and stuck to the idea that his marriage with Johanna would be the saving of him. Her thoughts would have been sadder still could she have seen how Dietrich swerved from the path that led to Johanna’s cottage, and, almost as though unaware of what he did, wandered down toward the banks of the river. Here, where it joined the lake, the swirling torrent became calmer, and patches of sedge and water-willow grew far out into the stream. It was now growing dusk, and the wind had dropped. As Dietrich paused, standing in the long, dank grass, he heard a sound, scarcely more than a whisper, borne to him on the dying breeze: “Dietrich!” and in a moment again, a little louder: “Dietrich!” A dread, irresistible fascination drew him nearer to the rush-grown banks, and as he went, he heard again and again that voice, calling his name with sweet insistence. And now, far down, almost hidden amid the tangle of willow-boughs and waving blue forget-me-nots that swept the surface of the dark lake, a face appeared—a lovely face, with a bloom as delicate as a rose-leaf or the heart of a shell, and all around it long tresses of red-gold hair floated upon the water.
“Dietrich,” the sweet voice continued, “I have called thee unto seven times. Hast thou not heard? Wilt thou not come and save me?”
Dietrich sprang forward, parting the overhanging boughs, and trying to get a clearer sight of the vision. “How shall I save thee?” he cried, almost in spite of himself, while fear and longing struggled together at his heart, “and who art thou?”
But lo! the face was gone; only a rustling was heard in the bushes, and presently a water-snake reared its head among the reeds, and shooting out its forked tongue, glided towards him. As it came nearer, the same voice sounded again upon the silent air. “Save me by a kiss,” it said. But fear now gained the mastery, and with a cry of horror, Dietrich turned and fled; yet, as his hurrying feet bore him from the water’s edge, the voice pursued him still.
“So mightest thou have broken the spell and saved me,” it wailed, “but thou art afraid! Oh, wretched man, who hast seen my face and fled! And oh, miserable me! for now none may save me, till the oak-tree be sprung from the acorn, and the cradle carved from the oak!”
Almost beside himself, Dietrich reached the top of the river-bank, and hurried through the wood to his cottage, where his mother found him late that night—when she came anxiously out to watch for his coming—lying senseless on the steps of the little porch.
An illness now laid hold upon him, through which Johanna and Lisbeth nursed him with untiring care. During the weary weeks of his slow return to life, Dietrich turned to Johanna as the flower turns to the sunshine; and, indeed, she was his one ray of comfort, and in her presence only could he shake off the gloom that overshadowed him. He was glad enough to obey his mother’s wish, and make Johanna his wife as soon as might be; and the girl’s loving heart did not shrink from the lifelong task of cheering this broken-down man.
So she went to live in the cottage, and in due time a little son, too, came to brighten their home. Dietrich worked as usual again, but always showed an unconquerable dislike to going near the river or the lake; and the sight of a snake was enough to send him into a fit of shuddering terror, such as none could understand.
Time went on, and Johanna fancied that he was becoming more like himself again, till one day he happened to notice, in an open space beside the cottage, a tiny oak sapling springing up from the grass.
“Dost thou know how yonder little tree came there?” he asked of his wife.
“To be sure,” replied Johanna. “One day, when thou wert sick, and I was heavy at heart, and came out here for a breath of air, I found an acorn in the wood, and bethought me of planting it here. ‘If it grows up,’ I thought, ‘I shall take it as a good omen;’ and now, see how it thrives!” Johanna laughed merrily, but Dietrich’s face darkened.
“A good omen,” he murmured. “Who knows? ‘When the oak-tree is sprung from the acorn——’ I cannot read the saying.”
That night Lisbeth said to her daughter-in-law: “My son looks again as he did in those unhappy days. Didst thou not notice the terror-struck look he wore this evening? Heaven help us!”
Johanna laughed it off, but in a few days she said to her mother: “Thou wert right; he goes down to the river-banks again, as he used. What shall we do?”
There seemed nothing to be done. Neither his wife nor his little son could cheer him any longer. Once Johanna saw him stride out to the open patch, and make as though he would have torn the sapling up by the roots, but he suddenly stopped, as though an invisible hand had held him, and turned down through the woods to the river.
He never came back. They said that he had lost his footing in the dusk, and fallen into the deep, reedy pool that lies beneath the steep bank where the river joins the lake. At any rate, he was found there, drowned and dead; and his death was that of old Lisbeth, too, for she never raised her head again after the news was brought to her.
The years rolled on, and young Dietrich, Johanna’s son, grew to be a man. The oak-tree, too, grew tall and strong, and overshadowed the little cottage.
Dietrich the second was a sober-minded fellow, and gave no heed to the maidens, nor could he be got to think of marriage till he was well on in life. He followed the calling of ferryman, and ferried people over the narrow end of the lake, just above the place where the river rushes out of it again. His mother disliked this work for him, and often tried to persuade him to give it up, but he had a fondness for the water. Once he filled her with a great fear.
“There must be something wrong with my hearing,” said he, “for I often fancy my name is called across the water, and I hurry back with my boat, but there is no passenger there.”
Johanna remembered how Lisbeth had told her that it was a voice calling from the water that had bewitched the boy’s father, and she determined her son should not fall a prey to the same fate.
“Dietrich,” said she, “thou must marry. Thou art past thirty now, and over grave even for thy years. I am getting old, and need help in the cottage, too.”
“Have it as thou wilt, mother,” he replied, with a sober smile; “only find me a red-haired maiden. I have ever had a fancy for red-haired women; I do not know whence I got it, for there are not many such hereabouts.”
His mother wondered at what seemed to her an idle speech, and one very unlike her grave son, but she thought little more of it, and presently told him she thought he could not do better than take their neighbour’s daughter Alice to wife; “for, if she is not red-haired,” she said, laughing, “she is red-cheeked, and as merry as a squirrel—a good mate for a grave fellow like thee.”
Dietrich said there was no hurry, but at last, for the sake of peace, he yielded, and was betrothed to Alice.
But before they could be married a strange thing happened. As he sat waiting one day on the bank of the lake beside his empty boat, he heard a sound among the bushes behind him, and looking round, fancied he saw a gleam of red-gold hair through the leaves. At the same time, he could have sworn that a voice quite close to him murmured these words: “Is the oak-tree not yet grown?”
He sprang up and went in search, as he thought, of a would-be passenger, but no one was there; only, as he bent his head down to peer through the under-brush, a slender water-snake glided from amongst it, almost touching his face with its forked tongue—“as though it would have kissed him,” he said afterwards. He started back with a shout of disgust, for he had always had a great dislike to snakes, and snatching up a stone from the ground, threw it at the creature. But it glided away untouched; only, as it went, it gave, so Dietrich swore, such a horrible and piercing scream, that his ears rang with it, and when that dreadful sound died away, all other sounds, too, ceased for him, and he was deaf from that hour.
He went home a graver man than before, and since all attempts to cure his deafness failed, he told Alice that he would give her back her word. But the stout-hearted little woman would not hear of it; she had had many a talk with Johanna, and was persuaded that, since his adventure, Dietrich needed her more than ever. “No such small matter,” she said, “would keep her from the man she loved.”
So these two, also, were wed; though there was but a poor prospect before them, for Dietrich soon saw that his infirmity would oblige him to give up his ferryman’s calling, and that just when he most needed it, for there would before long, he knew, be another mouth to feed in the little hillside cottage.
One spring evening, when the rain was falling and the wind swept the wet branches of the oak-tree right across the roof, Dietrich said to his wife: “I have a mind to cut down that oak-tree, and sell the timber, after I have used some to make a cradle for the little one that is coming. I never could abide the tree, and it now so overshadows the house that it grows damp for want of sun.”
“I planted the tree when thy father was ill,” said old Johanna from her nook by the fire, “and thought that its growth was a good omen for us.”
“It hath brought us but scant luck, that I can see,” rejoined Alice; “perhaps it will be a better omen dead than living.”
So the oak-tree was cut down, and the timber lay for a while and became seasoned; and when Dietrich’s little son, Dietrich the third, was a thriving, sturdy babe of a few months, his father one day brought in the new cradle that he had made him from the fallen oak-tree.
But Johanna’s life seemed to have been cut down with the tree, for that winter she failed and died. And who knows but it was well for her; she was thus spared another grief, for when next spring’s melting snows had swollen the waters of lake and river, Dietrich, whose deaf ears no longer heard the warning rush of the neighbouring waterfall, ventured too near the narrow part of the river, in his haste to get his boat over to the side where his passengers awaited him, and so both boat and man were swept down over the fall; nor was poor Dietrich’s body found for many days.
Now might it indeed have been thought that young Dietrich the third would avoid the fatal lake and river; but from the time he had lain, a rosy babe, in the oaken cradle, he had always been a merry, fearless little fellow, and the shadow that so long had darkened the cottage above the river seemed unable to touch him. He became a fisherman; and when the neighbours shook their heads meaningly, and reminded him that both his father and grandfather had perished in those waters, he would answer, with a cheery smile, that this was no reason why harm should befall him; the luck would turn the third time, he believed; and besides, he would know how to take care of himself, for his mother’s sake. There was no denying that he loved the water, and was successful in his calling, for the fish flocked to his nets as though they had been driven into them. He was fond of the different creatures that dwelt among the reedy banks—the water-fowl, the rats, and even the snakes—and many of them he tamed, so that they would come at his call. His delight was to sit idly rocking in his boat, as the twilight fell and the stars came out above the hill, and to listen to the rush of the river, and the mysterious sounds and calls that echoed across the lake. Then all sorts of strange fancies filled his mind, and amid the voices of the night, he thought he could hear one that called his name, in low, sweet tones, over and over again. This did not frighten him, but rather brought a throb of joy to his heart; and the voice at last grew familiar and dear to him, so that he missed it when storm and cold kept him away from the water for a while. The country-folk told tales, which his mother tried to keep from his ears, of how his grandfather had been driven distraught with terror by the voices that he had heard thus calling from the lake; and he wondered how this might be, and why such things should frighten one. At last he questioned his mother about it, and she replied quietly, for she was a cheery woman, and it was easy to see whence Dietrich got his sunny temper:
“’Tis true thy grandfather was a prey to his fears and fancies, my son, but methinks these fears were all in his own mind, and that nothing from without need have terrified him, if his spirit had but been firm and cheerful within. Thy father had something of the same sad temper, and so men said he too was bewitched; but I have this notion, that the water-folk would hurt none that did not first hurt themselves by their own timid mind. And so I have never withheld thee from the water, for I think thou art of different stuff from thy father, my boy.”
Dietrich nodded his head. “Thou art right, mother,” he said; “and perhaps these beings that call us are but as ourselves, and need our pity and our love.”
A few evenings after this, as he came home through the woods overhanging the river, he was aware of a rustling among the reeds and willows beneath him, and a voice—a voice that sounded strangely familiar to his ear—called from the water: “Ah, Dietrich, Dietrich, save me!”
He dashed down to the river’s brink, and, parting the boughs, saw through the dusk a lovely face gazing up at him—a face with a bloom upon it like a rose, and surrounded by tresses of red-gold hair, that had escaped the comb and floated far out upon the water. Two white hands clung to the branches above, and in an instant Dietrich had waded into the stream, and clasping the hands in his own, had drawn to a safe place upon the bank a slender maiden, who stood leaning against a tree, as she panted for breath and wrung the water-drops from her long tresses.
“Dietrich, I thank thee, for thou knowest no fear,” she presently said in the sweet, low tones that seemed so familiar.
“Fear!” rejoined the lad, with a laugh, though his voice trembled a little; “there was no time for that. What had to be done was to save thee from drowning.”
“Yet others have felt fear,” said the maiden, raising her deep, clear eyes to his. He could see them gleam through the deepening twilight, though he could but indistinctly make out her dress, which seemed rather different from that of the maidens he was wont to meet in the district.
“That is not the sort of fellow I am,” replied Dietrich, with a bold air; “it were strange if one should pause before giving a helping hand to any creature in need, let alone so fair a one as thou.”
He blushed as he spoke, and a strange fancy shot into his mind; but the maiden’s hapless plight, as she stood wringing the water from her garments, dismissed all other thoughts, and he continued: “Let me take thee quickly to my mother, who will dry thy garments and give thee shelter.”
“Nay, not to-night, Dietrich,” said the maiden. “I was on my way to some kinsfolk hard by, when I slipped from the path into the river, and theirs is the shelter I must seek out.”
He thought there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes as she spoke, but she continued more gravely: “Yet give thy mother greeting from me, and say I would gladly come and see her soon, for my kinsfolk have known thine this many a day, and I have often longed to climb to the cottage on the hill.”
The lad leaned forward eagerly; “Oh! let me lead thee there to-night,” he pleaded; “it is surely nearer than any other dwelling, and I am loth to leave thee, alone—and so soon,” he added falteringly.
“Nay, not now, Dietrich,” she repeated, while the merry smile again played over her face; “I am wet, and it is late, and my kinsfolk await me. Only give thy mother my message.”
“And what name doth she know thee by,” he asked, “since thou knowest mine so well?”
“My name is Crystal,” replied the maiden, “but I doubt she will not know me by it—though I know thine so well,” she added, laughing.
“Thou art a strange creature,” said the lad, laughing too, for her gaiety was infectious, “yet a very fair one, and if I may not go with thee, at least I may ask one boon for having saved thee out of the river—the boon of a single kiss.”
But at this Crystal drew back and became grave. “Not from me,” she said softly; “but if thou wouldst yet do anything for my sake, Dietrich, or see me again, give thy kiss to the first dumb thing that shall ask for a caress. That is my last word.” And, turning, she glided so fast through the trees, that she was out of sight in a moment. Dietrich went home, a strange turmoil in his heart, and told his mother of the adventure.
“And the oddest thing is,” he concluded, “that her face looks to me as though I had always known it, had always seen and loved those red-gold tresses coiled about that white brow—and her voice is as the voices that call to me at night-time over the lake. Dost thou know, indeed, who she may be, or what these kinsmen are to whom she is going?”
“I know nothing of them, my son,” replied Alice, “and I do not think we shall ever know aught. Yet do as she bade thee, for it may bring thee good fortune.”
Dietrich spent a sleepless night, and in the morning went down early to the pool between lake and river, where his boat was moored, and sat down to mend his nets on the bank. Yet his hands often lay idle, and his eyes were fixed dreamily upon the reeds before him. Suddenly a rustling among them roused him with a start, and the next moment a water-snake glided forth, and paused beside him. He held out his hand, for the creature looked like one he had tried to tame a while before. The snake drew nearer across the grass, and presently wound itself about his leg, raising its head and shooting out its tongue, as though it would have touched his face. Like a flash, the remembrance of Crystal’s request came into his mind. The snake’s eyes were fixed upon his, and drew him with a strange fascination.
“This is more than I bargained for,” laughed Dietrich aloud, “but for Crystal’s sake I will do it, as I would do anything—wise or foolish—that she bade me. Here is a kiss for thee, then, thou cold, uncanny little creature;” and he kissed the glittering head.
But his lips had scarcely touched it, when a gleeful shout broke from the woods behind him, and the well-known sweet voice, ringing with merriment, cried out: “Dietrich, Dietrich, I am here!”
He started to his feet, and never knew what became of the snake, for in one bound he had cleared the bank, and was clasping Crystal by the hand. She looked fairer than ever in the daylight, which seemed to lend her form more strength and vitality than it had shown the evening before. Her red-gold tresses shone with dewdrops, like a flower in the meadow, and her eyes glowed with life and happiness.
Dietrich’s wooing was short, for he had known from the first moment of beholding Crystal, that here was the only woman in the world for him. And Alice, too, directly she looked into the fair, laughing face, doubted not that luck, in however mysterious a fashion, had come to young Dietrich indeed. There was much talk among the country-folk over the mystery of the young bride’s parentage, and the dower of jewels that so simple a country lass had brought her husband.
Not that they were long in his possession, for Crystal could never bear the sight of them, and they were soon sold, all but one, an ornament of gold shaped like a little snake, with an emerald head, which Dietrich would have her keep. What she told him, in the secrecy of their lovers’ talk, concerning this, and her past existence, will never be known. What is certain is, that a stately farmhouse, with good store of cattle and sheep, rose up in place of the old cottage, on the meadow where the oak-tree had stood. Success followed Dietrich in all he undertook, and the fish thronged to his net more abundantly than before. But those voices of old cried to him no more across the lake, for now, as he turned homewards at evening, it was his dear wife’s voice that sent forth from the farm-yard upon the hill the soft, familiar call: “Dietrich!”
XIX
THE LITTLE GLASS-MAN
Part I. THE SUNDAY-CHILD
Part II. THE COLD HEART
THE SUNDAY-CHILD
In the days before railroads were known or tourists ran to and fro over the face of the earth, the Black Forest was given up, one may say, to two races of men—the woodmen and the glass-blowers, who even yet hold their own among the remoter hills and valleys. They have always been fine fellows, tall and broad-shouldered, as though the strengthening breath of the mountain pines had given them, from their youth up, a healthier body, a clearer eye, and a braver spirit than the inhabitants of the valleys and plains below. The glass-blowers live on the Baden side of the hills, and theirs was of old the most picturesque dress—you may see it still in the more out-of-the-way parts of the forest. Their black jerkins, wide, closely pleated breeches, red stockings, and pointed hats give them a quaint, somewhat serious appearance, in keeping with the work which they carry on in the depths of the woods. There are watchmakers among them as well, who peddle their goods for sale, far and wide; but the glass-makers, as a rule, are stay-at-home folk. They are very different from their brethren the woodmen, who live on the other side of the forest, and spend their lives felling and hewing their great pine-trees, which they then float down the Nagold into the Neckar, and from the Neckar into the Rhine. Then down that mighty river they go, far away into Holland, where the men of the Black Forest and their long rafts are a familiar sight. They stop in every city along the banks of the Rhine, to see if any one will purchase their stout beams and planks; but the longest and stoutest they keep for the Mynheers, who buy them at a high price to build their ships with. Now these raftsmen are used to a rough and wandering life; it is joy to them to spin down the stream upon their tree-trunks, and sorrow to climb the bank homewards again. And their holiday dress, too, is quite different from that of the glass-makers. Their jerkins are of dark linen, with wide, green braces crossed over their broad chests; their breeches are of black leather, and from one pocket, as a sign of their calling, an inch-rule is always to be seen peeping forth. But their chief pride and joy are their boots, the highest, most likely, that are worn in any part of the world, for they can be drawn up two spans and more above the knee, and the raftsmen can wade through three or four feet of water without getting wet.
Not so very long ago, the people of the forest still believed in spirits that haunted the woods, and the superstition died hard. Strangely enough, the legends clothe these supernatural inhabitants of the woods in just the same garments, varying with the district, that the men of flesh and blood wear. So they tell that the little Glass-man, a kindly spirit, only about four feet high, was never to be seen save in a broad-brimmed, pointed hat, with little black jerkin, wide breeches, and red stockings. But Dutch Michael, who haunted the other side of the forest, seems to have been a huge, broad-shouldered fellow, in the dress of the raftsmen; and many who are supposed to have seen him, swear that they would have been sorry to pay out of their own pockets, the price of the calf-skins that made his boots,—“for they were so big that an ordinary man could have stood up to his neck in them,” they say, “and this is the sober truth.”
There is a wonderful story of the dealings of these wood-spirits with a young fellow of the Black Forest, which I will tell just as I heard it.
There lived then, in the forest, a widow, Dame Barbara Munk, whose husband had been a charcoal-burner, and supplied the glass-makers with the fuel they needed for their work. After his death, she kept her son, a boy of sixteen, to the same calling as his father; and young Peter Munk, though a well-grown lad, at first made no objection, for he had always seen his father looking black and ugly, as he crouched, the whole week long, over his smoky kiln, or went abroad to sell his coals, an object of disgust to every one; so that it never came into his head to mind such a thing. But a charcoal-burner has a great deal of time for thought, about himself and others; and as Peter Munk sat by his kiln, the dark trees, and the deep silence of the forest round about him, often inclined his heart to tears and nameless yearnings. There was something—he knew not what—that both saddened and angered him. After thinking it over for a long time, he at last came to the conclusion that it was his calling.
“A lonely, black-faced charcoal-burner!” he said to himself; “it is but a poor life. The glass-blowers, the watchmakers, even the musicians who play in the tavern on Sunday evenings, are all thought of some consequence. And yet if Peter Munk, washed and dressed in his best, with his father’s holiday jerkin and silver buttons, and a pair of new red stockings, were to make his appearance, and some one behind, seeing the new stockings and the upright gait, were to say: ‘Who is yon fine lad?’ I am sure that directly he passed me by and caught sight of my face, he would add: ‘Oh, it is but “Coal-Munk Peter”!’”
The raftsmen, too, from the other side of the forest, excited his envy. When these giants of the woods went by in their grand clothes, with half-a-hundredweight of silver buttons, clasps, and chains upon them; when they stood watching the dance, with widespread legs and important faces, and swore in Dutch, and smoked yard-long Cologne pipes, like the richest of the Mynheers, then he would think that the lot of such men must be the happiest on earth. But when these fortunate beings felt in their pockets and brought out handfuls of thaler-pieces, tossing up for sixpenny-bits, and staking five guldens here, and ten there, Peter would turn quite bewildered, and slink sadly away to his hut; for he saw many of these master wood-cutters play away more in one evening than poor father Munk had been wont to earn in a year. There were, in particular, three of these men whom he thought so wonderful; he did not know which of them to admire most. One was a big, stout, red-faced fellow, known as “fat Ezekiel,” and supposed to be the richest man in all the country round. He went twice a year to Amsterdam to sell wood for building, and was always lucky enough to sell it for a higher price than any one else, so that, whereas the others had to come home on foot, he always drove back in great style.
The other was the tallest, thinnest man in the whole forest, nick-named “long Shuffler,” and Peter envied him because of his extraordinary impudence. He contradicted the most important people, and always took up more room in the tavern, however crowded it was, than four of the stoutest among the other guests; for he must needs sit with both elbows on the table, or draw up one of his long legs before him on the bench; yet no one ever dared gainsay him, for he had endless sums of money.
But the third was a young, handsome fellow, and the best dancer for miles round, so that he was called the “king of the dancing-floor.” He had been quite poor, and had worked for one of the master wood-cutters, but all at once he became as rich as any of them. Some said he had found a pot of gold under an ancient pine-tree; others that he had been spearing fish, as the raftsmen often do, and that, not far from Bingen on the Rhine, he had fished up on his spear a great roll of gold pieces, and that the roll belonged to the famous Nibelung-treasure, which, as every one knows, lies buried there. Be this as it may, he certainly grew rich all of a sudden, and was looked up to by young and old, as though he were a prince.
Coal-Munk Peter often thought of these three men, as he sat alone in the pine-woods. All three, indeed, had one and the same ugly fault, which won them every man’s hatred—and this was their inhuman avarice and hard-heartedness towards their debtors and the poor about them; yet the people of the Black Forest are kind-hearted as a rule. But so it goes in this world—if they were hated for their meanness, they were thought much of for their wealth, for who else could throw money about as though they shook it down from the fir-trees?
“I can’t go on like this,” said Peter sadly to himself one morning—the day before had been a holiday, and the ale-house full of people—“if the luck doesn’t turn soon, I shall do myself a harm! If only I were rich and respected, like fat Ezekiel, or bold and powerful, like the long Shuffler, or famous, like the king of the dancing-floor, and could throw the musicians thalers instead of pence, as he does! Where can the fellow get all his money from?”
He thought over all the means he had heard of, whereby men make money, but could not seem to hit on any good ones. At last he remembered the tales about the folk who had been enriched, in old days, by Dutch Michael and the little Glass-man. In his father’s lifetime their hut had often been visited by poor people like themselves; then the talk had always been of rich men, and of how they had come by their riches, and in these tales the little Glass-man often played a part. When he thought hard, he could almost remember the verse which had to be spoken in the “Pine-thicket” in the midst of the forest, to make him appear. It began thus:—