At the same moment the branches of a near-by bush were pushed back almost without a rustle, and a man stepped out, dressed in a green hunting jacket, with a silver shield on his arm and his rifle cocked in his hand.  He cast a hurried glance over the glen and stared sharply at the boy, then stepped forward, nodded toward the shrubbery, and gradually seven or eight men came into sight, all in the same costume, with hunting knives in their belts and cocked weapons in their hands.

“Frederick, what was that?” asked the one who had first appeared.  “I wish the cur would die on the spot.  For all he knows, the cows could chew the ears off my head.”

“The scoundrel has seen us,” said another.  “Tomorrow you’ll go on a trip with a stone about your neck,” Frederick went on, and kicked at the dog.  “Frederick, don’t act like a fool!  You know me, and you understand me too!” A look accompanied these words, which had an immediate effect.

“Mr. Brandes, think of my mother!”

“That’s what I’m doing.  Didn’t you hear anything in the forest?”

“In the forest?” The boy threw a hasty glance at the forester’s face.  “Your woodchoppers—­nothing else.”

“My woodchoppers!” The naturally dark complexion of the forester changed to a deep brownish red.  “How many of them are there, and where are they doing their job?”

“Wherever you have sent them; I don’t know.”

Brandes turned to his comrades.  “Go ahead; I’ll follow directly.”  When one by one they had disappeared in the thicket, Brandes stepped close up to the boy.  “Frederick,” he said in tones of suppressed rage, “my patience is worn out; I’d like to thrash you like a dog, and that’s no worse than you deserve.  You bundle of rags, without a tile in your roof to call your own!  Thank God, you’ll soon find yourself begging; and at my door, your mother, the old witch, shan’t get as much as a moldy crust!  But first both of you’ll go to the dungeon!”

Frederick clutched a branch convulsively.  He was pale as death, and his eyes looked as if they would shoot out of his head like crystal bullets—­but only for a moment.  Then the greatest calmness, bordering on complete relaxation, returned.  “Sir,” he said firmly, in an almost gentle voice, “you have said something that you cannot defend, and so, perhaps, have I. Let us call it quits; and now I will tell you what you wish.  If you did not engage the woodchoppers yourself, they must be the ‘Blue Smocks,’ for not a wagon has come from the village; why, the road is right before me, and there are four wagons.  I did not see them, but I heard them drive up the pass.”  He faltered a moment.  “Can you say that I have ever hewn a tree on your land, or even that I ever raised my axe in any other place but where I was ordered to?  Think it over, whether you can say that?” A confused muttering was the forester’s only answer; like most blunt people, he repented easily.  He turned, exasperated, and started toward the shrubbery.  “No, sir,” called Frederick, “if you want to follow the other foresters, they’ve gone up yonder by the beech-tree.”