A murmur of assent came from the men.  Even the horses seemed to take fresh heart.  They flattened their backs to draw the heavy loads, and blew the frost from their nostrils as they pushed ahead.

The night grew broader and less oppressive.  A gate of brightness was opened secretly somewhere in the sky; higher and higher swelled the clear moon-flood, until it poured over the eastern wall of forest into the road.  A drove of wolves howled faintly in the distance, but they were receding, and the sound soon died away.  The stars sparkled merrily through the stringent air; the small, round moon shone like silver; little breaths of the dreaming wind wandered whispering across the pointed fir-tops, as the pilgrims toiled bravely onward, following their clue of light through a labyrinth of darkness.

After a while the road began to open out a little.  There were spaces of meadow-land, fringed with alders, behind which a boisterous river ran, clashing through spears of ice.

Rude houses of hewn logs appeared in the openings, each one casting a patch of inky blackness upon the snow.  Then the travellers passed a larger group of dwellings, all silent and unlighted; and beyond, they saw a great house, with many outbuildings and enclosed courtyards, from which the hounds bayed furiously, and a noise of stamping horses came from the stalls.  But there was no other sound of life.  The fields around lay bare to the moon.  They saw no man, except that once, on a path that skirted the farther edge of a meadow, three dark figures passed by, running very swiftly.

Then the road plunged again into a dense thicket, traversed it, and climbing to the left, emerged suddenly upon a glade, round and level except at the northern side, where a swelling hillock was crowned with a huge oak-tree.  It towered above the heath, a giant with contorted arms, beckoning to the host of lesser trees.  “Here,” cried Winfried, as his eyes flashed and his hand lifted his heavy staff, “here is the thunder-oak; and here the cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the false god Thor.”

III

THE SHADOW OF THE THUNDER-OAK

Withered leaves still clung to the branches of the oak:  torn and faded banners of the departed summer.  The bright crimson of autumn had long since disappeared, bleached away by the storms and the cold.  But to-night these tattered remnants of glory were red again:  ancient blood-stains against the dark-blue sky.  For an immense fire had been kindled in front of the tree.  Tongues of ruddy flame, fountains of ruby sparks, ascended through the spreading limbs and flung a fierce illumination upward and around.  The pale, pure moonlight that bathed the surrounding forests was quenched and eclipsed here.  Not a beam of it sifted downward through the branches of the oak.  It stood like a pillar of cloud between the still light of heaven and the crackling, flashing fire of earth.