ni again before the
Christmas tree was lighted; and then he would either break with Toni
or feel free to marry her. "The bride stared at Adam with amazement as
he put on his grey cloak and his fur cap and seized his pointed stick.
He looked both handsome and terrible." For he is one of the heroes
Germans love, a giant who once held a bull by its horns while Martina
escaped from it, who is called the _Gaul_, because for a wager he once
carried the cart and the load a cart horse should have carried, and
who on this wild winter night meets the wolf in the forest and kills
it with his stick. So you see him striding through the snow-bound
forest to the village where Martina lives, dragging the wolf after
him, as strong as Siegfried, as credulous as a child, ready to believe
that the voices of his father and his child both looking for him in
the snow are witches' voices. But when he gets to the village he finds
that his child, so long disowned and disregarded, is really lost, and
is looking for him in the snow. The hatter who tramps from village to
village hung with hats met him, and tried to turn him back. But the
child said he had come out to find his father, and must go on. Then
every man in the village assembles at the _Pfarrhaus_, and, led by the
_Pfarrer's_ brother-in-law (an eventual husband for Heidenmueller's
Toni), sets out to find Joseph in the snow. Before they start Adam
vows before the whole community that whether the child is alive or
dead nothing shall ever part him again from Martina, and when he has
made this vow you see the whole company depart in various directions
carrying torches, ladders, axes, and long ropes. Meanwhile the child,
after some alarms and excursions, meets three angels (children
masquerading), who take him with them to the mill where Toni has just
lighted the Christmas tree. She rescues Joseph from _die wilde
Roettmaennin_, and that same night, her father dying of his carouse, she
becomes a rich heiress and free of her wicked stepmother. Joseph's
hostile grandfathers, after a fight in the snow, make friends, the
obliging _Pfarrer_ marries Adam and Martina at midnight, and soon
after the _wilde Roettmaennin_ who will not be reconciled leaves this
world. So everyone who deserves happiness gets it. But though you only
half believe in the story you have been in the very heart of the Black
Forest, the companion of its people, the observer of their most
intimate talk and ways. You have heard the