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.

Sebalt 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 Schneeberg.
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 w