for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance.  Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very dark ravine.  Until now they had spoken little.  Simon seemed pensive, the boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks.  Suddenly Simon asked, “Do you like whiskey?” The boy did not answer.  “I say, do you like whiskey?  Does your mother give you some once in a while?”

“Mother hasn’t any herself,” answered Frederick.

“Well, well, so much the better!  Do you know the woods before us?”

“It is the Forest of Brede.”

“Do you know what happened here?” Frederick remained silent.  Meanwhile they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

“Does your mother still pray much?” Simon began again.

“Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening.”

“Really?  And you pray with her?”

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed.  “At twilight before supper she tells her beads once—­then I have not yet returned with the cows; and again in bed—­then I usually fall asleep.”

“Well, well, my boy!” These last words were spoken under the sheltering branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen.  It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches.  Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than terror.  Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream.  It seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away.  Roots of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps uncertain; several times he came near falling.  Now some distance ahead the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large clearing.  The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly.  Everywhere stumps of trees jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still fresh, trembling in the evening breeze.  Simon stopped a moment and surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest.  In the centre of the open space stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height.  A pale ray of light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.