are cheerful and cleanly,
the inhabitants are at their ease: nay, I could almost fancy that the
woods are greener here than elsewhere, and the sky bluer; and, so far
as the eye can reach, you have pleasure and delight in beholding the
bountiful Earth."

"And whenever you cross the stream," said Brigitta, "you are, as it
were, in another world, all is so dreary and withered; but every
traveler declares that our village is the fairest in the country, far
or near."

"All but that fir-ground," said her husband; "do but look back to it,
how dark and dismal that solitary spot is lying in the gay scene--the
dingy fir-trees, with the smoky huts behind them, the ruined stalls,
the brook flowing past with a sluggish melancholy."

"It is true," replied Brigitta; "if you but approach that spot, you
grow disconsolate and sad, you know not why. What sort of people can
they be that live there, and keep themselves so separate from the rest
of us, as if they had an evil conscience?"

"A miserable crew," replied the young farmer; "gipsies, seemingly,
that steal and cheat in other quarters, and have their hoard and
hiding-place here. I wonder only that his lordship suffers them."

"Who knows," said the wife, with an accent of pity, "but perhaps they
may be poor people, wishing, out of shame, to conceal their poverty;
for, after all, no one can say aught ill of them; the only thing is,
that they do not go to church, and none knows how they live; for the
little garden, which indeed seems altogether waste, cannot possibly
support them; and fields they have none."

"God knows," said Martin, as they went along, "what trade they follow;
no mortal comes to them; for the place they live in is as if
bewitched and excommunicated, so that even our wildest fellows will
not venture into it."

Such conversation they pursued while walking to the fields. That
gloomy spot they spoke of lay apart from the hamlet. In a dell, begirt
with firs, you might behold a hut and various dilapidated farm-houses;
rarely was smoke seen to mount from it, still more rarely did men
appear there; though at times curious people, venturing somewhat
nearer, had perceived upon the bench before the hut some hideous
women, in ragged clothes, dandling in their arms some children equally
dirty and ill-favored; black dogs were running up and down upon the
boundary; and, at eventide, a man of monstrous size was seen to cross
the foot-bridge of the brook, and disappear in th