They did not grow silent for that, but they took another tone.  They began to hiss and to pant be hind him.  A big viper came gliding.  Its tongue dripping venom hung far out of its mouth, and its bright body shone against the withered leaves.  Beside the snake pattered a wolf, a big, gaunt monster, who was ready to seize fast in his throat when the snake had twisted about his feet and bitten him in the heel.  Sometimes they were both silent, as if to approach him unperceived, but they soon betrayed themselves by hissing and panting, and sometimes the wolf’s claws rung against a stone.  Involuntarily Tord walked quicker and quicker, but the creatures hastened after him.  When he felt that they were only two steps distant and were preparing to strike, he turned.  There was nothing there, and he had known it the whole time.

He sat down on a stone to rest.  Then the dry leaves played about his feet as if to amuse him.  All the leaves of the forest were there:  small, light yellow birch leaves, red speckled mountain ash, the elm’s dry, dark-brown leaves, the aspen’s tough light red, and the willow’s yellow green.  Transformed and withered, scarred and torn were they, and much unlike the downy, light green, delicately shaped leaves, which a few months ago had rolled out of their buds.

“Sinners,” said the boy, “sinners, nothing is pure in God’s eyes.  The flame of his wrath has already reached you.”

When he resumed his wandering, he saw the forest under him bend before the storm like a heaving sea, but in the path it was calm.  But he heard what he did not feel.  The woods were full of voices.

He heard whisperings, wailing songs, coarse threats, thundering oaths.  There was laughter and laments, there was the noise of many people.  That which hounded and pursued, which rustled and hissed, which seemed to be something and still was nothing, gave him wild thoughts.  He felt again the anguish of death, as when he lay on the floor in his den and the peasants hunted him through the wood.  He heard again the crashing of branches, the people’s heavy tread, the ring of weapons, the resounding cries, the wild, bloodthirsty noise, which followed the crowd.

But it was not only that which he heard in the storm.  There was something else, something still more terrible, voices which he could not interpret, a confusion of voices, which seemed to him to speak in foreign tongues.  He had heard mightier storms than this whistle through the rigging, but never before had he heard the wind play on such a many-voiced harp.  Each tree had its own voice; the pine did not murmur like the aspen nor the poplar like the mountain ash.  Every hole had its note, every cliff’s sounding echo its own ring.  And the noise of the brooks and the cry of foxes mingled with the marvellous forest storm.  But all that he could interpret; there were other strange sounds.  It was those which made him begin to scream and scoff and groan in emulation with the storm.