“Oh, I have never done anybody any wrong!  I am only a poor old chronicler!  Let me not die without absolution, far from the succour of the Church!”

The great wooden box full of heather seemed at every effort to escape to sink deeper and deeper.  The poor man thought he was going down into a gulf, when, happily, Christian reappeared, crying—­

“Well, Maitre Bernard, what did I say? here is the storm.”

And now the hut was for an instant full of dazzling light, and my worthy uncle, who was lying facing the door, could see the whole valley lighted up, with its innumerable fir-trees crowded along the slopes down the valley as close as the grass of the fields, its rocks piled up on the banks of the river, which was rolling its sulphurous blue waves over the rounded boulders of the ravine, and the towers of Nideck rising proudly in the air fifteen hundred feet above.

Then the darkness covered all up again.  That was the first flash.

But in that instant of time he caught sight of a strange figure crouching at the end of the hut without being able to make out what it really was.

Great drops were beginning to patter on the roof.  Christian lighted a rush, and seeing Maitre Bernard with his hands convulsively clutching the edge of his box of heather, and his face covered with beads of cold sweat, he cried—­

“Why!  Master Bernard! what is the matter with you?”

But, without answering, he merely pointed to the figure huddled up in the corner; it was an old woman, so very advanced in extreme old age, so yellow and wrinkled, with such a hooked nose, fingers so skinny, and lips so lean, that she looked like an old owl with all its feathers gone.  There were only a few hairs left on the back of her head; the rest of her skull was as bare of covering as an egg.  A threadbare ragged linen gown covered her poor skeleton figure.  She was sightless, and the expression of her face was one of constant reverie.

Christian, noticing my uncle’s inquiring look, turned his head and said quietly—­

“It’s old Irmengarde, the old teller of legends.  She is waiting to die till the old tower falls into the torrent.”

Uncle Bernard, stupefied, looked at the woodman; he did not seem inclined to joke; on the contrary, he looked serious.

“Come, Christian,” said the good man, “you mean to have your joke.”

“Joke! no indeed, old and feeble as you see her, that old woman knows everything; the spirit of the ruins is in her.  She was living when the old lords of the castle lived.”

Now my old uncle was very nearly falling backwards at this astounding disclosure.

“But what do you mean?” he cried; “the castle of Nideck has been down these thousand years!”

“What if it was two thousand years?” said the woodman, making the sign of the cross as a new flash lighted up the valley; “what does that prove?  The spirit of the ruins lives in her.  A hundred and eight years Irmengarde has lived with this spirit in her.  Before her it was in old Edith of Haslach; before Edith in some other—­”