abulous, heroic, or
barbarous legends and chronicles of the former lords of that land. He
went back to the Tribocci, that German nation settled about Strasbourg,
remembering Clovis, Chilperic, Theodoric, Dagobert, the furious struggle
between Brunehaut, Queen of Austrasia, and Fredegonde, queen of Chilperic
of France, and many heroes and heroines besides. All these fierce
personages passed in review before his eyes. The vague murmuring of the
trees, the inky blackness of the rocks, favoured this strange invocation.
All the distinguished personages of his chronicle were there, and the
boar, and the wolf, and the bear were among them.

At last, unable to hold out any longer, the good man hung his
three-cornered hat upon a peg in the wall and lay down upon the heath.
The cricket sang its monotonous song upon the hearth, a few surviving
sparks were running hither and thither in the smouldering fire, his
eyelids dropped, and he slept a deep, sound sleep.

CHAPTER II.

Maitre Bernard Hertzog had slept a couple of hours, and the boiling of
the water in the millrace alone competed with the noise of his loud
snoring, when suddenly a guttural voice, arising in the midst of the deep
silence, cried--

"Droeckteufel! Droeckteufel! have you forgotten everything?"

The voice was so piercing that Maitre Bernard, waking with a sudden
start, felt his hair creeping with horror. He raised himself upon his
elbow and listened again with eyes starting with astonishment. The hut
was as dark as a cellar; he listened, but not a breath, not a sound,
came; only far away, far beyond the ruins, a dull, distant roar was heard
among the mountains.

Bernard, with neck outstretched, heaved a deep sigh; in a minute he began
to stammer out--

"Who is there? What do you want?"

But no answer came.

"It was a dream," he said, falling back upon his heather couch. "I must
have been lying upon my back. There is nothing at all in dreams and
nightmares--nothing! nothing!"

But in the midst of the restored silence the same doleful cry was again
repeated--

"Droeckteufel! Droeckteufel!"

And as Maitre Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant
flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch,
the voice, in a dissonant chant, with pauses and strange accents, went
on--

"The Queen Faileube, espoused to our king, Chilperic--Queen Faileube,
learning that Septimanie, the governess of the young princes, ha