“No—­no,” murmured Hartmut, with another effort to free himself, but his mother held him fast in her arms.  He turned his face away and looked with hot eyes into the dark night, upon the desolate blackness of the wood and across at the will-o’-the-wisp, still pursuing its erratic course, now rising with convulsive, trembling flame, now sinking into the ground beneath, only to come up again quivering and glimmering.  There was something ghostly and horrible, and withal strangely fascinating in the ceaseless dance of this imp of night.

“Come with me, my son,” Zalika begged, in those dulcet tones which were hers, as well as her son’s.  “I have long since prepared all for your coming; I knew of a certainty that this day would surely come.  My carriage is waiting a short distance from here.  We can soon reach the railway station and will be far on our way before they are any the wiser at Burgsdorf.  With me lies freedom, life, happiness!  I will take you away and show you the great world, and when you are once in it, you will learn to breathe freely and enjoy life, as one redeemed from slavery.  I know what it is to be liberated from slavery.  I, too, wore the chains which, in an hour of foolish fascination, I forged for myself, but I should have torn them apart in the first year had it not been for my unborn child.  O, freedom is sweet, as you will soon learn.”

She knew only too well the words to choose to accomplish her purpose.  Freedom, life, happiness.  They signified so much.  They echoed and re-echoed in the heart of the boy, whose longing for freedom had always been repressed by a powerful hand.  Now like a picture from a magician’s hand, the fairy-like visions of promised liberty stood before him.  He need but stretch out his hand and it was his own.

“My word,” he murmured with a last feeble attempt to rescue himself.  “My father will despise me—­”

“When you have attained to a great, proud future,” Zalika interrupted him excitedly, “then go to your father and ask him if he dares to despise you; he would bind you to the earth, but you have wings to fly above it.  He does not understand a nature like yours, and never will.  Will you destroy yourself for the sake of a mere word and be a slave forever?  Come with me, Hartmut, with me to whom you are all the world.”

She led him slowly away, and he did not tear himself from her, but, as she caressed him and called him fond names she felt that his going was under protest, and that she had needed all her wiles to accomplish it.  A few minutes later the pond was deserted, mother and son had disappeared, and even the sound of their retiring footsteps had died out in the night air.  Over the moor moved only that weird, spectral life.  The flashing lights appeared and sank again in restless play,—­mysterious breaths of flame from the deep.

CHAPTER III.

It was autumn again, and the warm, golden light of a September day lay upon the woodland, which stretched away like a green ocean as far as eye could reach.