On the of Sperver was an expression of suppressed , on that of his companion bitter . This sportsman, whose woeful physiognomy had struck me on my first arrival at Nideck, was as thin and dry as a lath. His hunting-jacket was girded tightly about him by his belt, from which hung a hunting-knife with a horn handle; long leathern gaiters came above his knees; the horn went over his shoulder from right to left, the wide-expanded opening under his arm; on his head a wide-brimmed hat, with a heron's in the . His profile, coming to a point in a reddish tuft, looked not unlike a goat's.  
"Yes," cried Sperver, "I have got strange things to tell you."
 
He threw himself in a chair, seizing his head between his hands, while Sébalt calmly drew his horn over his head and laid it on the table.
 
"Now, Sébalt," cried Gideon, "speak out."
 
"The witch is hanging about the castle."
 
This piece of intelligence would have failed to interest me before seeing Marie Lagoutte, but now it struck more forcibly. There certainly was some mysterious connection between the lord of Nideck and that old woman. I knew nothing of the nature of this connection, and I felt that, at whatever cost, I must know it.
 
"Just wait a moment, friends," said I to Sperver and his comrade. "I want to know, first of all, where does this Black Pest come from?"
 
Sperver stared at me with .
 
"Come from? Who can tell that?"
 
"Very well, you can't. But when does she come within sight of Nideck?"
 
"As I told you, ten days before Christmas, at the same time every year."
 
"And how long does she stay?"
 
"A fortnight or three weeks."
 
"Is she ever seen before? Not even on her way? Nor after?"
 
"No."
 
"Then we shall have to catch her, seize upon her," I cried. "This is contrary to nature. We must find out where she comes from, what she wants here, what she is."
 
"Lay hold of her!" exclaimed Sperver; "seize her! Do you mean it?" and he shook his head. "Fritz, your advice is good enough in its way, but it is easier said than done. I could very easily send a bullet after her, almost at any time; but the count won't consent to that measure; and as for in any other way than by powder and shot, why, you had better go first and catch a squirrel by the tail! Listen to Sébalt's story, and you shall judge for yourself."
 
The master of the hounds, sitting on the table with his long legs crossed, his eyes mournfully upon me, and began his tale.
 
"This morning, as I was coming down from the Altenberg, I followed the hollow road to Nideck. The snow filled it up . I was going on my way, thinking of nothing particular, when I noticed a foot-track; it was deep down, and went across the road. The person had come down the bank and gone up on the other side. It was not a soft hare's foot, which hardly leaves an impression, it was not forked like a wild boar's track, it was not like a cloven , such as the wolf's—it was a deep hole. I stopped and stooped down, and cleared away the loose snow that fell round, and came upon the very track of the Black Pest!"
 
"Are you sure it was that?"
 
"Of course I am. I know the old woman by her foot better than by her figure, for I always go, sir, with my eyes on the ground. I know everybody by their tracks; and as for this one, a child might know it."
 
"What, then, distinguishes this foot so particularly?"
 
"It is so small that you could cover it with your hand; it is finely shaped, the heel is rather long, the outline clean, the great toe lies close to the other toes, and they are all as fine as if they were in a lady's . It is a lovely foot. Twenty years ago I should have fallen in love with a foot like that. Whenever I come across it, it has such an effect upon me! No one would believe that such a foot could belong to the Black Plague."
 
And the poor fellow, joining his hands together, the stone floor with doleful eyes.
 
"Well, Sébalt, what next?" asked Sperver impatiently.
 
"Ah, yes, to be sure! Well, I recognised that track and started off in pursuit. I was hoping to catch the creature in her , but I will tell you the way she took me. I climbed up the bank by the roadside, only two gunshots from Nideck. I go along the hill, keeping the track on my right; it led along the side of the wood in the Rhéthal. All at once it jumps over the ditch into the wood. I stuck to it, but, happening to look a little to my left, I saw another track which had, been following the Black Plague. I stopped short: was it Sperver's? or Kasper Trumpfs? or whose? I came to it, and you may fancy how I was when I saw that it was nobody from our place! I know every foot in the Schwartzwald from Fribourg to Nideck. That foot was like none of ours. It must have come from a distance. The boot—for it was a kind of well-made, soft gentleman's boot, with spurs, which leave a little print behind them—the boot was not round at the toes, but square. The sole was thin, and with every step, and it had no nails in it. The walk was rapid, and the short steps were like those of a young man of twenty to five-and-twenty. I noticed the stitches in the side leather at once, and I think I never saw finer."
 
"Who can this be?" Sperver exclaimed.
 
Sébalt raised his shoulders and extended his hands, but said nothing.
 
"Who can have any object in following the old woman?" I asked Sperver.
 
"No one on earth can tell," was the reply.
 
And so we sat a few minutes over what we had heard.
 
At last he went on again with his narrative:—
 
"I kept following the track; it went up the next through the pine-forest. When it doubled round the Koche Fendue I said to myself, 'Ah, you accursed plague! If there was much game of your sort there would not be much sport; it would be preferable to work like a nigger!' So we all three arrive—the two tracks and I—at the top of the Schnéeberg. There the wind had been blowing hard; the snow was knee-deep—but no matter! I must get on! I got to the edge of the of the Steinbach, and there I lost the track. I halted, and I saw that, after trying up and down in several directions, the gentleman's boots had gone down the Tiefenbach. That was a bad sign. I looked along the other side of the torrent, but there was no appearance of a track there—none at all! The old hag had paddled up and down the stream to throw any one off the who should try to follow her. Where was I to go to?—right, or left, or straight on? Not knowing, I came back to Nideck."
 
"You haven't told us about her breakfast," said Sperver.
 
"No, I was forgetting. At the foot of Roche Fendue I saw there had been a fire; there was a black place; I laid my hand upon it, thinking it might be warm, which would have proved that the Black Plague had not gone far; but it was as cold as ice. Close by I saw a wire trap in the bushes. It seems the creature knows how to game. A hare had been caught in it; th............