such wicked
things?"

"The other day he beat Aaron and took six groschen from him."

"If he took money from Aaron, no doubt the accursed Jew had first
cheated him out of it. Huelsmeyer is a respectable householder, and the
Jews are all rascals!"

"But, mother, Brandes also says that he steals wood and deer."

"Child, Brandes is a forester."

"Mother, do foresters tell lies?"

Margaret was silent a moment, and then said, "Listen, Fritz! Our Lord
makes the wood grow free and the wild game moves from one landowner's
property into another's. They can belong to no one. But you do not
understand that yet. Now go into the shed and get me some fagots."

Frederick had seen his father lying on the straw, where he was said to
have looked blue and fearful; but the boy never spoke of it and seemed
indisposed to think of it. On the whole, the recollection of his father
had left behind a feeling of tenderness mingled with horror, for nothing
so engrosses one as love and devotion on the part of a person who seems
hardened against everything else; and in Frederick's case this sentiment
grew with the years, through the experience of many slights on the part
of others. As a child he was very sensitive about having any one mention
his deceased father in a tone not altogether flattering to him--a cause
for grief that the none too delicate neighbors did not spare him. There
is a tradition in those parts which denies rest in the grave to a person
killed by accident. Old Mergel had thus become the ghost of the forest
of Brede; as a will o' the wisp he led a drunken man into the pond by a
hair; the shepherd boys, when they crouched by their fires at night and
the owls screeched in the hollows, sometimes heard quite clearly in
broken accents his "Just listen, sweet Lizzie;" and an unprivileged
woodman who had fallen asleep under the broad oak and been overtaken by
nightfall, had, upon awakening, seen his swollen blue face peeping
through the branches. Frederick was obliged to hear much of this from
other boys; then he would howl and strike any one who was near; once he
even cut some one with his little knife and was, on this occasion,
pitilessly thrashed. After that he drove his mother's cows alone to the
other end of the valley, where one could often see him lie in the grass
for hours in the same position, pulling up the thyme.

He was twelve years old when his mother received a visit from her
younger brother who lived in Brede and had