of the Hartzman, and whether he had been punished by some dreadful
accident for his plot against Schürer. But no answer was forthcoming
to this question, for many years. Mistress Gretchen was already the
buxom mother of many fair children, when one day a man, worn and old
before his time, came toiling up the village street, and stopped before
the ale-house. Master Ran, now quite an old fellow, was sitting at
the door, and seeing the man’s gaze fixed upon his face, noticing,
too, something familiar in his look, he inquired: “Dost thou know me,
friend, or can I do somewhat for thee?”
“I see,” answered the traveller, “that the Hartzman is forgotten. I
suspected as much, and suppose, indeed, that the game is played out,
but I wanted to come and see for myself!”
“The Hartzman!” cried Ran. “Why, we all thought you lost, man, long
ago, with the others. For know that they were lost, all save my
son-in-law, Christopher, who has made Schneeberg rich. But tell us
where thou hast been these many years, and why thou didst give up the
prize that once so tempted thee--yea, tempted thee to do a dirty trick,
too. But let bygones be bygones!”
“So he got her after all,” mused the Hartzman. “Well, when I saw what
had befallen me, I guessed that all was lost.”
By this time a crowd had collected round the stranger, and a whisper
went round, explaining who he was.
“And what was it befell thee?” asked one of the Hartzman’s former
comrades.
“When I reached home,” the latter answered, “I went to the Morgenbrots
Valley, near the Brocken, for I knew many wonders happened there, and
that it was the likeliest place for me to find the sort of treasure I
was after. Many days and nights I wandered about the hills and woods of
that district, hoping to overhear some word of counsel from the voices
of the underworld. At last, one morning, as I sat near a spring that
rises toward the head of the valley, I suddenly saw a man of strange
appearance, and wearing a foreign dress, standing by the spring, where
no one had stood the moment before; and he was holding a sieve under
the waterfall, but as the stream rushed through it, the sieve caught
and held a number of large pearls. When his sieve was full of them the
man washed his hands in the spring and said:
‘In the Morgenbrots Valley I wash myself,
In Venice town[8] I dry myself.’
With that he disappeared, and I hurried to the water’s edge, but could
only pick up one or two pearls that he had let drop; nor could I find
any more. This was not enough, so I determined to follow him, and
repeated the charm, making sure it would carry me into some hidden
treasure-cave. But I had hardly finished the words before I found
myself in a strange city, where I saw not a soul I knew, and could not
understand a word any one said. I am a bold man, but I am bound to say
this dismayed me, and I wandered about till nightfall, wondering how I
should keep from starvation. I was beginning to despair, when, on one
of the bridges of which the city was full, I met the same man whom I
had seen that morning in my native mountains. He could understand me, I
knew, and I spoke to him and implored him to help me.
“‘I know thee, and thy history,’ said the man, and his face was ill to
look upon. ‘Thou art a fool, and wouldst have been a thief. Wherefore
should I help thee?’
“‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘have pity on me this once, and know it was but love
that made me covetous and reckless. I am a fool, in truth; but I am
also, surely, a countryman of thine, and in a wretched case. I pray
thee, send me back to my own land.’
“At last he was moved, and took me home with him to a splendid house,
where the very bed I slept upon was hung with tassels of pure gold. And
all this treasure he had got out of our Morgenbrots Valley. He told me
to go to bed and sleep in peace, and that on rising in the morning I
was to take water and wash my hands, saying:
‘In Venice town I wash myself,
In the Morgenbrots Valley I dry myself,’.
and I should at once find myself in our Hartz Mountains again. I did
as he bade me, and all came to pass as he said. Only, when I looked at
my face in the spring, and when I questioned the folk in the villages
hard by, I found that not one night, as I supposed, but many years, had
passed since I left the valley. Home, relations--and bride, I had lost
all. I knew it was vain to return here, yet I have come all the same.”
“Upon my soul, ’tis a worse punishment than thou didst deserve!” cried
Master Ran. “But come home now, at any rate, and greet my daughter.”
“Nay,” replied the wanderer, taking up his staff again, “there is no
place there for me, and I had best go on my way. I shall never be
anything but a homeless man now.”
XVII
THE MAIDEN’S ROCK
[Illustration]
On the left bank of the Elbe, near Pirna, stands a lofty crag, called
the “Maiden’s Rock.” One part of it, in fact, is shaped like a maiden’s
figure--and this is the reason why:--
It seems that, a thousand years ago and more, there dwelt in the
village of Pfaffendorf, close by, a terrible old witch, who went by
the name of Mother Gundelheind. No one dared go near her or enter her
house, but those who had ventured to peep through the window in her
absence declared that a blue flame danced upon her hearthstone, above
which some devilish brew hung boiling, and that a black fox crouched
whining beside this uncanny fire. Many a belated passer-by had seen her
at night, flashing through the air upon her broomstick; and sometimes
she had a companion, a fiery dragon who flew by her side, and brought
her great store of red, molten gold, that he dropped from his wings
before her threshold. It is needless to say that she was never at home
on Walpurgis-night, the great meeting time of all the witches and evil
spirits; but, indeed, she was oftener abroad than within doors, for
when she was not revelling with her own kind, she was busy working evil
spells upon her neighbours, bewitching their wives, their children,
and their cattle. Plenty of people had seen her at it, but there was
nothing to be done; complaints and lamentations were of no avail
against her stony heart, and punishment was not to be thought of, for
her revenge would have been such as no one in the land dared brave;
and besides, how can any one get the better of a witch so mighty, that
neither fire nor water have power over her? Yet her punishment awaited
her, and she feared it, and had, in her great wickedness, found a way
out of it, as she thought.
For there was another person who dwelt in that ill-famed cottage, and
was in all ways the opposite of the terrible Mother Gundelheind. This
was her young daughter Truda, and how she came by such a daughter none
can tell; for Truda was as sweet as a May morning, and her hazel eyes
had the look that the angels wear, in the church pictures. Instead of
the old woman’s horny, blackened hide, Truda had a skin as fair and
soft as cream; instead of her mother’s harsh and grizzled locks, she
had long, silky tresses, the colour of a newly ripened chestnut; and
instead of the witch’s cruel, rasping speech, a voice as gentle and
musical as the ringdove’s. And her mind and soul were as beautiful
as her body, so that every one loved her, and looked after her with
friendly smiles, while they turned their eyes from the wicked mother
and her ill-omened glance. To be sure, this made it hard for Truda to
have any of the friends or the pastimes befitting her age and sweet
nature; for none would cross the threshold of her mother’s house,
nor would she suffer her daughter to enter one of the neighbours’
dwellings. She kept Truda fast at home, sewing, washing, or spinning;
for it can easily be believed that the old witch herself had no time or
mind for such a wholesome work, and the housekeeping would have gone to
ruin but for Truda.
Nor was this all: the capricious creature would have her child as pious
as she herself was godless, and made her learn her Catechism, and go
to church on Sundays, and fast, and do penance, with such zeal that
the poor child was sometimes quite worn-out. Never a day’s merrymaking
did she get; never might she join the dance upon the village-green, or
wander by the river in the moonlight, like the other young folk; for
even when her mother was from home, she could watch and spy upon her
by means of a magic mirror, in which the old witch could see at her
pleasure all that was happening at home, or, indeed, in any place she
chose to think of.
Now, it may be thought that the old woman was not so graceless but
that she still had some lingering care for her child’s well-being--but
this, alas! was not the cause of her watchfulness, for which she had
only too horrid a reason. It is needless to say that this wicked
creature had long been given, body and soul, to the Evil One; she knew
that the day would come when he would surely claim his prey, and, as
has been said, she feared her punishment, and was ready to pay any
price to escape, and to be allowed to go on freely in her wickedness.
Now, upon one of those midnight wanderings, during which all dark
secrets were unveiled to her, she had happened to find out that the
Prince of the lower regions was not so particular as to the fashion
in which his debtors paid their score, and that he would be willing
to take her little daughter Truda in her place, so long as the girl
was innocent of any sort of wrong-doing. And this was why Mother
Gundelheind scolded and spied, and used every means in her power to
bring up her daughter a model of pious perfection.
She had succeeded pretty well, to be sure, and her bad example, far
from doing any harm, seemed rather to have driven the girl in an
opposite direction; but there was one thing that had so far escaped
the old hag’s notice. She could not choose but let Truda go into the
village sometimes--to market, for instance--because no one would have
any dealings with the witch herself, if they could help it, while to
Truda they gave their freshest fruit and richest cream. And again,
she must go to church, for that her mother dared not let her miss.
So it came to pass that Truda made a few friends, and one especial
admirer, Wippold the forester, who spent half his life in planning
stolen meetings with her, or in waiting to catch a glance from those
hazel eyes as she went demurely by, prayer-book in hand. Old Mother
Gundelheind had by this time got into the habit of trusting Truda,
perhaps over much; but even witches will be caught napping sometimes,
and this was the time of the Walpurgis Feast, and her head was full
of other matters. So it came to pass that she forgot, once or twice,
to look into her magic mirror, and never knew that Truda held tryst
with the forester upon the rock overhanging the Elbe, to which the
country-folk sometimes climbed up on their Sunday rambles. For the
witch’s harsh and unnatural behaviour had borne fruit at last, and had
driven even the sweet, confiding Truda into underhand ways, because
they were the only means of bringing a little relief into a life that
would else have been nearly unbearable.
But it was hard work to keep anything from the old hag for long; and
presently she began to notice that Truda was wont to sit dreaming by
the hearth of an evening, while her spindle lay idle beside her, and
her wheel stood silent in a corner. Then the witch grew suspicious, and
observed her more closely again; nor was it long before she spied out
Wippold escorting the girl home from market one morning. He left her
before they turned the corner of the cottage, to be sure, but as soon
as Truda’s hand touched the latch, the old woman flew at her like the
fury she was.
“What is this?” she screamed. “What good-for-nothing acquaintances
hast thou been picking up, idle baggage that thou art? Never think to
deceive me! If thou dost so much as give yon fellow a ‘good-day’ again,
I will rather starve here at home with thee than suffer thee to set
foot in the market!” And she flung herself down, quite out of breath,
in her dark ingle-nook, muttering something about “running no such
risks.”
Truda betook herself to her wheel, silent and bewildered, and ventured
no word of self-defence. But that evening, as she sat gazing into
the flame that flickered up with blue tongues from the blackened
hearth-stone, she plucked up courage and asked--
“Why must I never speak to a man, mother, or have any dealings with the
village-folk, as other maidens do?”
“Because men, and all human folk, are evil. Thou shalt speak to the man
I shall choose for thee, and to no other,” rejoined the hag, with a
grim chuckle.
“Have men wrought thee harm, then, that thou dost shun them so?”
continued the girl. “Methinks the folk at market fear thee more than
thou dost them. And yet there be some folk whose company thou dost
seek, I have heard thee say, when thou goest forth on these long
journeys. Whither dost thou go so far, mother, and wherefore?”
“Fine doings!” sputtered the old woman viciously. “Listening to evil
spoken of thine own mother, and spying upon her! Little white-faced
fool! what knowest thou of that which is fitting to be done? But have
a care, or thou wilt find out something of my power, and of how I can
punish when I have a mind.”
Truda sank into terrified silence, and brooded in her own heart over
the mysteries of the dark fate which she seemed unable to escape.
But she would escape it yet! She would not give up her love, and
everything that made life happy, without a struggle! Only her weapons
must be guile and secrecy, and she was but little skilled in the use
of them, poor child. For days and weeks she worked and drudged at home,
to quiet her mother’s suspicions; only now and then, as she hurried
along to get some few things they could not do without, she managed to
give Wippold a sign that kept him quiet. At last, one Sunday, the old
witch, afraid to keep her from her pious duties any more, and feeling
sure that she had frightened her into obedience, bade the girl get
ready to go to Mass; she herself would see her to the church door,
though she might go no farther. Truda could not quite keep out of her
face the joy which this order gave her, and her mother did not fail to
notice the radiant gleam which lit up her eyes. She hurried away to get
ready; and before the bell had ceased ringing, her mother had watched
her run lightly up the steps and disappear into the church. Could she
at that moment have seen through stone walls, she would have beheld her
daughter reply to a sign made her by the young fellow who stood waiting
behind one of the pillars and follow him out at the small north door,
which was nearly opposite to the one by which she had gone in. And now,
keeping close in the thickets, so as to be seen of no one, the pair
of lovers hastened towards the lonely rock, where they were sure of a
quiet hour together, and where Truda could unburden her heart of all
its fears and sorrows, and hear from her lover that he would never rest
till he had carried her away from her unhappy home.
Meanwhile the old witch had returned to her cottage, thinking over her
daughter’s behaviour that morning. “I wonder why she was so overjoyed
to go to church,” she mused; “it was not always her wont.” She could
not get the matter out of her mind, and after a time she was so
tormented by suspicion that she fetched out her mirror, and sprinkling
some drops of magic water upon it, desired it to show her the spot
where her daughter was.
Immediately there arose before her the picture of the lofty rock--its
surface sparkled in the sunshine; down below, the blue Elbe wound along
amid the meadows, and on a narrow green space near the top of the crag,
and overshadowed by it, she saw the forms of the two lovers. Her Truda,
the virtuous maiden, on whom she had staked all her hopes, was folded
in the arms of the forester, while he pressed burning kisses upon her
lips, and prayer-book and rosary lay forgotten at their feet.
Every drop of blood in the old hag’s veins tingled with fury, a hellish
light gleamed in her sunken eyes, and seizing her witch’s staff in her
hand, she went raging forth, and in the twinkling of an eye had rushed
like a storm up the rocky ascent, and fallen upon the luckless lovers.
“Accursed child! and hast thou lied to me, and is this the Mass thou
wentest forth to hear? And thou, thrice accursed fellow, it was an evil
day for thee when thou camest a-wooing of Gundelheind’s daughter!”
And before the ill-fated man could so much as attempt to defend
himself, the witch, suddenly grown to an immense height, and towering
grimly above him, seized him in her huge horny hands and cast him down
the cliff into the river below.
[Illustration: And in the twinkling of an eye had rushed like a storm
up the rocky ascent, and fallen upon the luckless lovers.]
Truda, white and cold with anguish, stood rooted to the spot, and now
the raging fury sprang upon her also. “Now it is thy turn,” she hissed
out. “Ah! hast thou lied, and blasphemed, and dallied here with thy
lover? A pretty ransom thou art, and much that creditor of mine will
care to get thee now! Hence go all my chances of safety! But at least
thou, accursed creature, shalt never be a witness of my defeat!” And
lifting the staff with which she wrought her wicked spells, she struck
her daughter across the face with it. But Truda never felt the blow.
Beneath her fiendish mother’s curse she had turned to stone; the rock
folded her, as it were, in its inflexible arms, and to this day bears,
as a witness of the terrible deed, the form of a maiden.
But where, as she fled through the night from his vengeance, the
Arch-Enemy’s stroke fell upon Mother Gundelheind, that the legend
forbears to say.
XVIII
THE WATER-SNAKE
[Illustration]
Old Lisbeth sat by the fire and spun, but on the opposite side of the
hearth her son Dietrich crouched idle, his cheek upon his hand, gazing
into the embers. For many weeks he had been growing more and more
silent and listless, and no one could tell what ailed him. Was it that
Johanna, the maiden he was courting, had been cruel to him, or was
something wrong with his work? His old mother looked across at him and
wondered. Outside the wind was blowing, and brought plainly to their
ears the sound of the river as it rushed through the valley towards the
lake of Pöhlde, that the Hartz-folk call the Tumpensee. Now and then
the blast rose to so shrill a pitch that you might have thought a voice
was calling from afar; and when this happened, Dietrich would start
from his seat and make as though he would rush from the house, but each
time he checked himself, and sank with a shiver upon the bench again.
At last Lisbeth could bear it no longer.
“What ails thee, son?” she cried. “Art thou bewitched, that a mere gust
of wind can set thee all a-tremble?”
Dietrich was silent for a while, casting furtive glances toward door
and window, as though he were afraid that his reply might call up some
unwelcome sight. At last he answered in a whisper--
“I doubt I am, indeed, mother! Hast thou ever heard tell of voices
rising from the river and the lake yonder? Or was any one drowned there
these days, that one should see a gleam of red-gold hair beneath the
water?”
Lisbeth turned pale.
“Heaven help us!” she exclaimed in a low voice, as though she, too,
were afraid of being overheard, “do thou have nothing to do with the
river-side or the banks of the lake, Dietrich. That is how men come by
their death.”
“But knowest thou anything of it, mother? What is there to fear, if
fear there be?” persisted the young man.
“What care I for such tales! Tales there are of spell-bound maidens
who call for some one to deliver them, and of water-snakes, and such
nonsense; the country is full of them, thou knowest as well as I. But
there is no need to believe them,” continued Lisbeth hastily, as if
fearing she had said too much. “Do thou take thy Johanna to wife, and
bring her home; that will drive all such fancies from thy head.”
A look of pain crossed Dietrich’s face.
“Ah, Johanna!” he exclaimed, “if I could but turn my mind to thoughts
of her! Yet I fear she has fancied me cold and neglectful of late.”
“Nay, nay, son,” his mother answered, “Johanna has eyes but for thee;
trust my word for it. See, the storm is passing; do thou go over and
bid her good-evening, and tell her that the old mother needs some more
of that yarn she can spin so stoutly, and thinks she might even bring
it over herself, and gladden this house with a sight of her face. There
is a gloom hangs about it when she is away, and the sooner she lives
with us for good, the better it will be.”
Dietrich took his cap from the peg and opened the door, but as he stood
on the threshold, he turned to his mother once more.
“What if I should bring _her_ to harm too?” he said, and was gone.
The old woman mused on by the hearth; her thoughts were not cheerful,
for in her secret heart she firmly believed that some water-sprite
had indeed bewitched her unlucky boy, but she put a bold face on it,
and stuck to the idea that his marriage with Johanna would be the
saving of him. Her thoughts would have been sadder still could she
have seen how Dietrich swerved from the path that led to Johanna’s
cottage, and, almost as though unaware of what he did, wandered down
toward the banks of the river. Here, where it joined the lake, the
swirling torrent became calmer, and patches of sedge and water-willow
grew far out into the stream. It was now growing dusk, and the wind
had dropped. As Dietrich paused, standing in the long, dank grass, he
heard a sound, scarcely more than a whisper, borne to him on the dying
breeze: “Dietrich!” and in a moment again, a little louder: “Dietrich!”
A dread, irresistible fascination drew him nearer to the rush-grown
banks, and as he went, he heard again and again that voice, calling his
name with sweet insistence. And now, far down, almost hidden amid the
tangle of willow-boughs and waving blue forget-me-nots that swept the
surface of the dark lake, a face appeared--a lovely face, with a bloom
as delicate as a rose-leaf or the heart of a shell, and all around it
long tresses of red-gold hair floated upon the water.
“Dietrich,” the sweet voice continued, “I have called thee unto seven
times. Hast thou not heard? Wilt thou not come and save me?”
Dietrich sprang forward, parting the overhanging boughs, and trying to
get a clearer sight of the vision. “How shall I save thee?” he cried,
almost in spite of himself, while fear and longing struggled together
at his heart, “and who art thou?”
But lo! the face was gone; only a rustling was heard in the bushes, and
presently a water-snake reared its head among the reeds, and shooting
out its forked tongue, glided towards him. As it came nearer, the same
voice sounded again upon the silent air. “Save me by a kiss,” it said.
But fear now gained the mastery, and with a cry of horror, Dietrich
turned and fled; yet, as his hurrying feet bore him from the water’s
edge, the voice pursued him still.
“So mightest thou have broken the spell and saved me,” it wailed, “but
thou art afraid! Oh, wretched man, who hast seen my face and fled! And
oh, miserable me! for now none may save me, till the oak-tree be sprung
from the acorn, and the cradle carved from the oak!”
Almost beside himself, Dietrich reached the top of the river-bank,
and hurried through the wood to his cottage, where his mother found
him late that night--when she came anxiously out to watch for his
coming--lying senseless on the steps of the little porch.
An illness now laid hold upon him, through which Johanna and Lisbeth
nursed him with untiring care. During the weary weeks of his slow
return to life, Dietrich turned to Johanna as the flower turns to the
sunshine; and, indeed, she was his one ray of comfort, and in her
presence only could he shake off the gloom that overshadowed him. He
was glad enough to obey his mother’s wish, and make Johanna his wife as
soon as might be; and the girl’s loving heart did not shrink from the
lifelong task of cheering this broken-down man.
So she went to live in the cottage, and in due time a little son,
too, came to brighten their home. Dietrich worked as usual again, but
always showed an unconquerable dislike to going near the river or the
lake; and the sight of a snake was enough to send him into a fit of
shuddering terror, such as none could understand.
Time went on, and Johanna fancied that he was becoming more like
himself again, till one day he happened to notice, in an open space
beside the cottage, a tiny oak sapling springing up from the grass.