arance
would have led one to expect; for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a
look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance.
Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be
mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes
riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his
appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious
interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the
Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very
dark ravine. Until now they had spoken little. Simon seemed pensive, the
boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks. Suddenly
Simon asked, "Do you like whiskey?" The boy did not answer. "I say, do
you like whiskey? Does your mother give you some once in a while?"

"Mother hasn't any herself," answered Frederick.

"Well, well, so much the better! Do you know the woods before us?"

"It is the Forest of Brede."

"Do you know what happened here?" Frederick remained silent. Meanwhile
they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

"Does your mother still pray much?" Simon began again.

"Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening."

"Really? And you pray with her?"

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At
twilight before supper she tells her beads once--then I have not yet
returned with the cows; and again in bed--then I usually fall asleep."

"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering
branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It
was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays
served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they
occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick
followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could
have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an
expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than
terror. Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of
the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It
seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed
in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots
of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps
uncertain; several