.
"Frederick, don't act like a fool! You know me, and you understand me
too!" A look accompanied these words, which had an immediate effect.

"Mr. Brandes, think of my mother!"

"That's what I'm doing. Didn't you hear anything in the forest?"

"In the forest?" The boy threw a hasty glance at the forester's face.
"Your woodchoppers--nothing else."

"My woodchoppers!" The naturally dark complexion of the forester changed
to a deep brownish red. "How many of them are there, and where are they
doing their job?"

"Wherever you have sent them; I don't know."

Brandes turned to his comrades. "Go ahead; I'll follow directly." When
one by one they had disappeared in the thicket, Brandes stepped close up
to the boy. "Frederick," he said in tones of suppressed rage, "my
patience is worn out; I'd like to thrash you like a dog, and that's no
worse than you deserve. You bundle of rags, without a tile in your roof
to call your own! Thank God, you'll soon find yourself begging; and at
my door, your mother, the old witch, shan't get as much as a moldy
crust! But first both of you'll go to the dungeon!"

Frederick clutched a branch convulsively. He was pale as death, and his
eyes looked as if they would shoot out of his head like crystal
bullets--but only for a moment. Then the greatest calmness, bordering on
complete relaxation, returned. "Sir," he said firmly, in an almost
gentle voice, "you have said something that you cannot defend, and so,
perhaps, have I. Let us call it quits; and now I will tell you what you
wish. If you did not engage the woodchoppers yourself, they must be the
'Blue Smocks,' for not a wagon has come from the village; why, the road
is right before me, and there are four wagons. I did not see them, but
I heard them drive up the pass." He faltered a moment. "Can you say that
I have ever hewn a tree on your land, or even that I ever raised my axe
in any other place but where I was ordered to? Think it over, whether
you can say that?" A confused muttering was the forester's only answer;
like most blunt people, he repented easily. He turned, exasperated, and
started toward the shrubbery. "No, sir," called Frederick, "if you want
to follow the other foresters, they've gone up yonder by the
beech-tree."

"By the beech-tree!" exclaimed Brandes doubtfully. "No, across there,
toward Mast Gorge."

"I tell you, by the beech-tree; long Heinrich's gun-sling even caught on
the crooked branch; why, I saw it!"

The f