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ecognised when in his agony he called me by my name. Then only my eyes were opened. Failure had dogged my every step. A hermit's life in the wilderness was all that was left for me. This resolve I communicated to the Baron von Schrankenheim, who, after vain attempts to dissuade me from my purpose, spoke to me of this wilderness, his property, where I could do real good among the rough wood-cutters, poachers, shepherds and charcoal-burners, who, cut off from the rest of the world, eked out their existence without priest or doctor or schoolmaster. Winkelsteg was to be my hermitage; and now I am here, a schoolmaster without a school. I shall have to study these rough folk and gain their confidence before I can set to work. _The Forest Folk_ Strange trades are carried on in this wilderness. These people literally dig their bread out of earth and stone and ant-heaps, scrape it off the trees, distill it out of uneatable fruit. There is the root-digger, whose booty of mountain ovens is said to go to far Turkey to be turned into scent. He would long have given up digging, to live entirely on poaching, but for his hope to unearth some day treasure of gold and jewels. One of these "forest-devils" has just died. He never worked at all. His profession was eating. He went from village to village and from fair to fair, eating cloth and leather, nails, glass, stones, to the amazement of his audience. He died from eating a poisonous root given him by some unknown digger--they say it was the devil himself. His funeral oration was delivered by a pale, bent, quiet man, known as the Solitary, of whose life nobody can give one any information. Then there is the pitch-boiler. You can smell him from afar, and see him glitter through the thicket. His pitch-oil is bought by the wood-cutter for his wounds, by the charcoal-burner for his burns, by the carter for his horse, by the brandy-distiller for his casks. It is a remedy for all ailments. The most dangerous of all the forest-devils is the brandy-distiller. He is better dressed than the others, has a kind word for everybody, and plays the tempter with but too great success. Black Matthias is dying in his miserable hut. His little boy and girl are playing around him, and his wife bids them be silent. "Let them shout," says Matthias; "but try and keep down Lazarus' temper." On his death-bed Matthias told me the story of his life--how he, a jolly, happy fellow, fell into the recruiti
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