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Page 50
It took us an hour to get through this thicket. The old poacher bit his
moustache with excitement and vexation, and his long nose visibly bent
into a hook. When I was only opening my mouth to speak, he would
impatiently say--
"Don't speak--it bothers me!"
At last we descended a valley to the left and Gideon pointing to the
track of the she-wolf outside the edge of the brushwood, triumphantly
remarked--
"There is no feint in this sortie, for once. We may follow this track
confidently."
"Why so?"
"Because the Pest has a habit every time she doubles of going three paces
to the right; then she retraces her steps four, five, or six in the other
direction, and jumps away into a clear place. But when she thinks she has
sufficiently disguised her trail she breaks out without troubling herself
to make any feints. There now! What did I say? Now she is burrowing
beneath the brushwood like a wild boar, and it won't be so difficult to
follow her up."
"Well, let us put the track between us and smoke a pipe."
We halted, and the honest fellow, whose countenance was beginning to
brighten up, looking up at me with enthusiasm, cried--
"Fritz, if we have luck this will be one of the finest days in my life.
If we catch the old hag I will strap her across my horse behind me like a
bundle of old rags. There is only one thing troubles me."
"And what is that?"
"That I forgot my bugle. I should have liked to have sounded the return
on getting near the castle! Ha, ha, ha!"
He lighted his stump of a pipe and we galloped off again.
The track of the she-wolf now passed on to the heights of the forest by
so steep an ascent that several times we had to dismount and lead our
horses by the bridle.
"There she is, turning to the right," said Sperver. "In this direction
the mountains are craggy; perhaps one of us will have to lead both horses
while the other climbs to look after the trail. But don't you think the
light is going?"
The landscape now was assuming an aspect of grandeur and magnificence.
Vast grey rocks, sparkling with long icicles, raised here and there their
sharp peaks like breakers amidst a snowy sea.
There is nothing more sadly impressive than the aspect of winter in a
mountainous region. The jagged crests of the precipices, the deep, dark
ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a
picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable melancholy. The silence
is so profound that you hear a dead leaf rustling on the snow, or the
needle of the fir dropping to the ground. Such a silence is oppressive as
the tomb; it urges on the mind the idea of man's nothingness in the
vastness of creation.
How frail a being is man! Two winters together, without a summer between,
would sweep him off the earth!
At times we felt it a necessity to be saying something if only to show
that we were keeping up our spirits.
"Ah, we are getting on! How fearfully cold! Lieverl�, what is the matter?
what have you found now?"
Unfortunately Fox and Rappel were beginning to tire; they sank deeper in
the snow and no longer neighed joyfully.
And added to this the endless mazes of the Black Forest wearied us too.
The old woman affected this solitary region greatly; here she had trotted
round a deserted charcoal-burner's hut; farther on she had torn out the
roots that projected from a moss-grown rock; there she had sat at the
foot of a tree, and that very recently--not more than two hours since,
for the track was quite fresh--and our hope and our ardour rose together.
But the daylight was slowly fading away!
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