The Fire Spirits by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781605438269
Amazon: 160543826X
Publisher: Ramble House
Published: 2015-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

XXXIV

Federspiel visited him in the evening, and shared with him the coarse fare which the old woman left in the pan which she placed on the table.

“Lefèbvre is now in command,” said Federspiel. “They mean to move in from four sides. Napoleon sent him an order containing only one sentence: Show no mercy!”

“How do you know that?”

“A prisoner said so.”

For a while they sat in silence. “Notburga is gone?” the hunter asked.

“She has left.”

“And her brother is ailing in his mind—” Federspiel supported his forehead on his hand. “Because he shot a drummer-boy. They didn’t want the Bavarians, and now the French are coming—”

“I don’t know that they’ll be much worse than our German brothers,” Peter remarked bitterly.

Federspiel raised his hand as if in entreaty.

“Don’t talk about it, please! A fire is burning inside me—repentance! What is one to do? For God’s sake! what is a man to do when he has lost his holiest beliefs?”

“We shall have to help, Herr Serafin Federspiel,” said Storck, and his lips twitched. “Now especially, when Napoleon’s bloodhounds are out—”

The hunter nodded, and listened to the wind wailing round the house.

“Oh, Germany, Germany!” he sighed. “Be the issue what it may! I can do nothing else.” He shook his fist towards the moon, just rising over the dark outlines of the mountain. “If only the French would come! I’d be happy at last. I’ll give my bullets a turn in white arsenic, so that a touch will poison the whole blood, and they’ll burn away, with fire in their entrails . . . Perhaps among them are some of those who tied me to the chestnut tree . . .” A mad rage shook his emaciated body, and a hoarse sob burst from his throat. “I’m suffocating!” he groaned, and running to the balcony window, wrenched it open. The round disc of silver looked down on him indifferently. A terrible fit of coughing seized him, and it was some time before he turned again to Peter.

“I heard a strange conversation yesterday up at the charcoal burner’s.” His face was now quite calm and his voice thin.

Peter looked at him inquiringly.

“There are the tracks of a lynx on the Haberer,” he continued, sitting down again at the table. “But no doubt it has gone over again to the Swiss side. I was up there, and came down by the charcoal station. The young lady who lives at the smith’s was there—”

He paused as he noticed that Peter started slightly, and he smiled significantly.

“I knew you would prick up your ears at that. And, moreover, it’s something that has to do with the Fire-spirits.”

“Julia? The young lady?” cried Peter indignantly. “How do you come to have such absurd notions?”

But the hunter would not allow himself to be interrupted.

“Well, Fraulein Julia, Sylvana and her brother were sitting together among the young alders, and I pulled up, as I wanted to hear what they were talking about. Sylvana was saying to her brother: ‘You are only a Raven,

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