Before the hut, and surrounded by the forest, was a large clearing, where two roads crossed.

Adam, Marx and Ruth had gazed first down one and then the other, to look for the wagon, but nothing was to be seen or heard.  As, with increasing anxiety, they turned back to the first path, the poacher grew restless.  His crooked mouth twisted to and fro in strange contortions, not a muscle of his coarse face was till, and this looked so odd and yet so horrible, that Ruth could not help laughing, and the smith asked what ailed him.

Marx made no reply; his ear had caught the distant bay of a dog, and he knew what the sound meant.  Work at the anvil impairs the hearing, and the smith did not notice the approaching peril, and repeated:  “What ails you, man?”

“I am freezing,” replied the charcoal-burner, cowering, with a piteous expression.

Ruth heard no more of the conversation, she had stopped and put her hand to her ear, listening with head bent forward, to the noises in the distance.

Suddenly she uttered a low cry, exclaiming:  “There’s a dog barking, Meister Adam, I hear it.”

The smith turned pale and shook his head, but she cried earnestly:  “Believe me; I hear it.  Now it’s barking again.”

Adam too, now heard a strange noise in the forest.  With lightning speed he loosened the hammer in his belt, took Ruth by the hand, and ran up the clearing with her.

Meantime, Lopez had compelled old Rahel to rise.

Everything must be ready, when Ulrich returned.  In his impatience he had gone to the door, and when he saw Adam hurrying up the glade with the child, ran anxiously to meet them, thinking that some accident had happened to Ulrich.

“Back, back!” shouted the smith, and Ruth, releasing her hand from his, also motioned and shrieked “Back, back!”

The doctor obeyed the warning, and stopped; but he had scarcely turned, when several dogs appeared at the mouth of the ravine through which the party had come the day before, and directly after Count Frohlinger, on horseback, burst from the thicket.

The nobleman sat throned on his spirited charger, like the sun-god Siegfried.  His fair locks floated dishevelled around his head, the steam rising from the dripping steed hovered about him in the fresh winter air like a light cloud.  He had opened and raised his arms, and holding the reins in his left hand, swung his hunting spear with the right.  On perceiving Lopez, a clear, joyous, exultant “Hallo, Halali!” rang from his bearded lips.

To-day Count Frohlinger was not hunting the stag, but special game, a Jew.

The chase led to the right cover, and how well the hounds had done, how stoutly Emir, his swift hunter, had followed.

This was a morning’s work indeed!

“Hallo, Halali!” he shouted exultingly again, and ere the fugitives had escaped from the clearing, reached the doctor’s side, exclaiming: