An hour after the conversation with Odile, Sperver and I were riding hard, and leaving Nideck rapidly behind us.  
The huntsman, bending forward over his horse's neck, encouraged him with voice and action.
 
He rode so fast that his tall Mecklemburger, her mane flying, tail outstretched, and legs extended wide, seemed almost motionless, so swiftly did she the air. As for my little Ardenne , I think he was running right away with his rider. Lieverlé accompanied us, flying alongside of us like an arrow from the bow. A whirlwind seemed to sweep us in our headlong way.
 
The towers of Nideck were far away, and Sperver was keeping ahead as usual when I shouted—
 
"Halloo, comrade, pull up! Halt! Before we go any farther let us know what we are about."
 
He faced round.
 
"Only just tell me, Fritz, is it right or is it left?"
 
"No; that won't do. It is of the first importance that you should know the object of our journey. In short, we are going to catch the hag."
 
A flush of pleasure brightened up the long sallow face of the old poacher, and his eyes sparkled.
 
"Ha, ha!" he cried, "I knew we should come to that at last!"
 
And he slipped his rifle round from his shoulder into his hand.
 
This significant action roused me.
 
"Wait, Sperver; we are not going to kill the Black Pest, but to take her alive!"
 
"Alive?"
 
"No doubt, and it will spare you a good deal of perhaps if I declare to you that the life of this old woman is bound up with that of your master. The ball that hits her hits your lord."
 
Sperver gazed at me in .
 
"Is this really true, Fritz?"
 
" true."
 
There was a long silence; our mounts, Fox and Rappel, tossed their heads at each other as if in the act of one another, scraping up the snow with their in congratulation upon so pleasant an expedition. Lieverlé opened wide his red mouth, with , extending and bending his long meagre body like a snake, and Sperver sat motionless, his hand still upon his gun.
 
"Well, let us try and catch her alive. We will put on gloves if we have to touch her, but it is not so easy as you think, Fritz."
 
And pointing out with extended hand the of mountains which lay unrolled about us like a vast amphitheatre, he added—
 
"Look! there's the Altenberg, the Schnéeberg, the Oxenhorn, the Rhéthal, the Behrenkopf, and if we only got up a little higher we should see fifty more mountain-tops far away, right into the Palatinate. There are rocks and ravines, passes and valleys, and waterfalls, forests, and more mountains; here , there firs, then oaks, and the old woman has got all that for her camping-ground. She tramps everywhere, and lives in a hole wherever she pleases. She has a sure foot, a keen eye, and can you a couple of miles off. How are you going to catch her, then?"
 
"If it was an easy matter where would be the merit? I should not then have chosen you to take a part in it."
 
"That is all very fine, Fritz. If we only had one end of her trail, who knows but with courage and perseverance—"
 
"As for her trail, don't trouble about that; that's my business."
 
"Yours?"
 
"Yes, mine."
 
"What do you know about following up a trail?"
 
"Why should not I?"
 
"Oh, if you are so sure of it, and you know more about it than I do, of course march on, and I'll follow!"
 
It was easy to see that the old hunter was that I should presume to upon his special province; therefore, only laughing inwardly, I required no repetition of the request to lead on, and I turned sharply to the left, sure of coming across the old woman's trail, who, after having left the count at the postern gate, must have crossed the plain to reach the mountain. Sperver rode behind me now, whistling rather contemptuously, and I could hear him now and then grumbling—
 
"What is the use of looking for the track of the she-wolf in the plain? Of course she went along the forest side just as usual. But it seems she has altered her habits, and now walks about with her hands in her pockets, like a respectable Fribourg tradesman out for a walk."
 
I turned a deaf ear to his hints, but in a moment I heard him utter an of surprise; then, fixing a keen eye upon me, he said—
 
"Fritz, you know more than you choose to tell."
 
"How so, Gideon?"
 
"The track that I should have been a week finding, you have got it at once. Come, that's not all right!"
 
"Where do you see it, then?"
 
"Oh, don't pretend to be looking at your feet."
 
And pointing out to me at some distance a scarcely perceptible white in the snow—
 
"There she is!"
 
Immediately he up to it; I followed in a couple of minutes; we had dismounted, and were examining the track of the Black Pest.
 
"I should like to know," cried Sperver, "how that track came here?"
 
"Don't let that trouble you," I replied.
 
"You are right, Fritz; don't mind what I say; sometimes I do speak rather at . What we want now is to know where that track will lead us to."
 
And now the huntsman knelt on the ground.
 
I was all ears; he was closely examining.
 
"It is a fresh track," he pronounced, "last night's. It is a strange thing, Fritz, during the count's last attack that old witch was hanging about the castle."
 
Then examining with greater care—
 
"She passed here between three and four o'clock this morning."
 
"How can you tell that?"
 
"It is quite a fresh track; there is all round it. Last night, about twelve, I came out to shut the doors; there was sleet falling then, there is none upon the footsteps, therefore she has passed since."
 
"That is true enough, Sperver, but it may have been made much later; for instance, at eight or nine."
 
"No, look, there is frost upon it! The fog that freezes on the snow only comes at daybreak. The creature passed here after the sleet and before the fog—that is, about three or four this morning."
 
I was astonished at Sperver's exactitude.
 
He rose from his knee, clapping his hands together to get rid of the snow, and looking at me thoughtfully, as if speaking to himself, said—
 
"It is twelve, is it not, Fritz?"
 
"A quarter to twelve."
 
"Very well; then the old woman has got seven hours' start of us. We must follow upon her trail step by step; on horseback we can do it in half the time, and, if she is still going, about seven or eight to-night we have got her, Fritz. Now then, we're off."
 
And we started afresh upon the track. It led us straight to the mountains.
 
away, Sperver said—
 
"If good luck only would have it that she had rested an hour or two in a hole in a rock, we might be up with her before the daylight is gone."
 
"Let us hope so, Gideon."
 
"Oh, don't think of it. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never tires; she tramps along all the hollows in the Black Forest. We must not flatter ourselves with vain hopes. If, perhaps, she has stopped on her journey, so much the better for us; and if she still keeps going, we won't let that discourage us. Come on at a ."
 
It is a very strange feeling to be hunting down a fellow-creature; for, after all, that unhappy woman was of our own kind and nature; endowed like ourselves with an soul to be saved, she felt, and thought, and reflected like ourselves. It is true that a strange of human nature had brought her near to the nature of the wolf, and that some great mystery overshadowed her being. No doubt a wandering life had the moral sense in her, and even almost the human character; but still nothing in the world can give one man a right to exercise over another the of the man over the .
 
And yet a burning ardour hurried us on in pursuit; my blood was at fever heat; I was to stand at no obstacle in laying hold of this extraordinary being. A wolf-hunt or a boar-hunt would not have excited me near so much.
 
The snow was flying in our rear; sometimes splinters of ice, bitten off by the horse-shoes, like shavings of iron from , whizzed past our ears.
 
Sperver, sometimes with his nose in the air and his red moustache floating in the wind, sometimes with his grey eyes intently following the track, reminded me of those famous Cossacks that I had seen pass through Germany when I was a boy; and his tall, horse, muscular and full-maned, its body as slender as a greyhound's, completed the illusion.
 
Lieverlé, in a high state of enthusiasm and excitement, took bounds sometimes as high as our horses' backs, and I could not but tremble at the thought that when we came up at last with the Pest he might tear her in pieces before we could prevent him.
 
But the old woman gave us all the trouble she could; on every hill she doubled, at every hillock there was a false track.
 
"After all, it is easy here," cried Sperver, "to what it will be in the wood. We shall have to keep our eyes open there! Do you see the accursed beast? Here she has confused the track! There she has been amusing herself the trail, and then from that height which is exposed to the wind she has slipped down to the stream, and has crept along through the cresses to get to the underwood. But for those two footsteps she would have sold us completely."
 
We had just reached the edge of a pine-forest. In woods of this description the snow never reaches the ground except in the open spaces between the trees, the it in its fall. This was a difficult part of our enterprise. Sperver dismounted to see our way better, and placed me on his left so as not to be hindered by my shadow.
 
Here were large spaces covered with dead leaves and the needles and of the fir-trees, which retain no footprint. It was, therefore, only in the open patches where the snow had fallen on the ground that Sperver found the track again.
 
It took us an hour to get through this . The old poacher bit his moustache with excitement and vexation, and his long nose visibly into a hook. When I was only opening my mouth to speak, he would impatiently say—
 
"Don't speak—it bothers me!"
 
At last we a valley to the left and Gideon pointing to the track of the she-wolf outside the edge of the brushwood, remarked—
 
"There is no feint in this sortie, for once. We may follow this track confidently."
 
"Why so?"
 
"Because the Pest has a habit every time she doubles of going three paces to the right; then she her steps four, five, or six in the other direction, and jumps away into a clear place. But when she thinks she has disguised her trail she breaks out without troubling herself to make any feints. There now! What did I say? Now she is beneath the brushwood like a wild boar, and it won't be so difficult to follow her up."
 
"Well, let us put the track between us and smoke a pipe."
 
We halted, and the honest fellow, whose was beginning to brighten up, looking up at me with enthusiasm, cried—
 
"Fritz, if we have luck this will be one of the finest days in my life. If we catch the old hag I will her across my horse behind me like a bundle of old rags. There is only one thing troubles me."
 
"And what is that?"
 
"That I forgot my . I should have liked to have sounded the return on getting near the castle! Ha, ha, ha!"
 
He lighted his of a pipe and we galloped off again.
 
The track of the she-wolf now passed on to the heights of the forest by so steep an that several times we had to dismount and lead our horses by the .
 
"There she is, turning to the right," said Sperver. "In this direction the mountains are craggy; perhaps one of us will have to lead both horses while the other climbs to look after the trail. But don't you think the light is going?"
 
The landscape now was assuming an aspect of and magnificence. Vast grey rocks, sparkling with long icicles, raised here and there their sharp peaks like breakers amidst a snowy sea.
 
There is nothing more sadly impressive than the aspect of winter in a mountainous region. The jagged of the , the deep, dark ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable . The silence is so profound that you hear a dead leaf on the snow, or the needle of the fir dropping to the ground. Such a silence is oppressive as the tomb; it urges on the mind the idea of man's nothingness in the vastness of creation.
&n............