ps like a dormouse, has
opened his eyes; or else I slip out by a back way by the postern gate.
Don't you see?"

"I understand you very well, but your ideas seem to me very strange,
Gideon."

"You, Fritz," he went on, without noticing my interruption, "you are
a most excellent lad; Heaven has covered your head with innumerable
blessings; just one glance at your jolly countenance, your frank, clear
eyes, your good-natured smile, is enough to make any one happy. You
positively bring good luck with you. I have always said so, and now would
you like to have a proof?"

"Yes, indeed I should. It would be worth while to know how much there is
in me without my having any knowledge of it."

"Well," said he, grasping my wrist, "look down there!"

He pointed to a hillock at a couple of gunshots from the castle.

"Do you see there a rock half-buried in the snow, with a ragged bush by
its side?"

"Quite well."

"Do you see anything near?"

"No."

"Well, there is a reason for that. You have driven away the Black Plague!
Every year at the second attack there she was holding her feet between
her hands. By night she lighted a fire; she warmed herself and boiled
roots. She bore a curse with her. This morning the very first thing which
I did was to get up here. I climbed up the beacon tower; I looked well
all round; the old hag was nowhere to be seen. I shaded my eyes with my
hand. I looked up and down, right and left, and everywhere; not a sign of
the creature anywhere. She had scented you evidently."

And the good fellow, in a fit of enthusiasm, shook me warmly by the hand,
crying with unchecked emotion--

"Ah, Fritz, how glad I am that I brought you here! The witch _will_ be
sold, eh?"

Well, I confess I felt a little ashamed that I had been all my life
such a very well-deserving young man without knowing anything of the
circumstance myself.

"So, Sperver," I said, "the count has spent a good night?"

"A very good one."

"Then I am very well pleased. Let us go down."

We again traversed the high parapet, and I was now better able to examine
this way of access, the ramparts of which arose from a prodigious depth;
and they were extended along the sharp narrow ridge of the rock down to
the very bottom of the valley. It was a long flight of jagged precipitous
steps descending from the wolf's den, or rather eagle's nest, down to the
deep valley below.

Gazing down I felt giddy, and recoiling in alarm to the middle of