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Page 33
"What, then, distinguishes this foot so particularly?"
"It is so small that you could cover it with your hand; it is finely
shaped, the heel is rather long, the outline clean, the great toe lies
close to the other toes, and they are all as fine as if they were in a
lady's slipper. It is a lovely foot. Twenty years ago I should have
fallen in love with a foot like that. Whenever I come across it, it has
such an effect upon me! No one would believe that such a foot could
belong to the Black Plague."
And the poor fellow, joining his hands together, contemplated the stone
floor with doleful eyes.
"Well, S�balt, what next?" asked Sperver impatiently.
"Ah, yes, to be sure! Well, I recognised that track and started off in
pursuit. I was hoping to catch the creature in her lair, but I will tell
you the way she took me. I climbed up the bank by the roadside, only two
gunshots from Nideck. I go along the hill, keeping the track on my right;
it led along the side of the wood in the Rh�thal. All at once it jumps
over the ditch into the wood. I stuck to it, but, happening to look a
little to my left, I saw another track which had, been following the
Black Plague. I stopped short: was it Sperver's? or Kasper Trumpfs? or
whose? I came to it, and you may fancy how astounded I was when I saw
that it was nobody from our place! I know every foot in the Schwartzwald
from Fribourg to Nideck. That foot was like none of ours. It must have
come from a distance. The boot--for it was a kind of well-made, soft
gentleman's boot, with spurs, which leave a little print behind them--the
boot was not round at the toes, but square. The sole was thin, and bent
with every step, and it had no nails in it. The walk was rapid, and the
short steps were like those of a young man of twenty to five-and-twenty.
I noticed the stitches in the side leather at once, and I think I never
saw finer."
"Who can this be?" Sperver exclaimed.
S�balt raised his shoulders and extended his hands, but said nothing.
"Who can have any object in following the old woman?" I asked Sperver.
"No one on earth can tell," was the reply.
And so we sat a few minutes meditating over what we had heard.
At last he went on again with his narrative:--
"I kept following the track; it went up the next ridge through the
pine-forest. When it doubled round the Koche Fendue I said to myself,
'Ah, you accursed plague! If there was much game of your sort there would
not be much sport; it would be preferable to work like a nigger!' So we
all three arrive--the two tracks and I--at the top of the Schn�eberg.
There the wind had been blowing hard; the snow was knee-deep--but no
matter! I must get on! I got to the edge of the torrent of the Steinbach,
and there I lost the track. I halted, and I saw that, after trying up and
down in several directions, the gentleman's boots had gone down the
Tiefenbach. That was a bad sign. I looked along the other side of the
torrent, but there was no appearance of a track there--none at all! The
old hag had paddled up and down the stream to throw any one off the scent
who should try to follow her. Where was I to go to?--right, or left, or
straight on? Not knowing, I came back to Nideck."
"You haven't told us about her breakfast," said Sperver.
"No, I was forgetting. At the foot of Roche Fendue I saw there had been a
fire; there was a black place; I laid my hand upon it, thinking it might
be warm, which would have proved that the Black Plague had not gone far;
but it was as cold as ice. Close by I saw a wire trap in the bushes. It
seems the creature knows how to snare game. A hare had been caught in it;
the print of its body was still plain, lying flat in the snow. The witch
had lighted the fire to cook it; she had had a good breakfast, I'll be
bound."
At this Sperver cried indignantly--
"Just fancy that old witch living on meat while so many honest folks in
our villages have nothing better than potatoes to eat! That's what upsets
me, Fritz! Ah! if I had but--"
But his thoughts remained untold; he turned deadly pale, and all three of
us, in a moment, stood rigid and motionless, staring with horror at each
other's ghastly countenances.
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