'You wish to know much, and require us to do dangerous things!' grumbled the patriarch.
'You have already told me so much,' urged Arwed, 'why not unreservedly tell me all? By my God, I will not abuse your confidence.'
'Who can deny you any thing?' whispered the woman, laughing. 'According to the information we received yesterday about sunset, you will indeed find him whom you seek upon the Ravensten; but whether living or dead, I cannot undertake to say.'
Arwed turned to go.
'Take care of yourself,' said the good woman in bidding him God speed. 'Naddock shows no mercy to an enemy. If you fall into his hands as an opponent, you are lost.'
'We are all in the hands of God,' answered Arwed with confidence; and, shaking hands with Jervis, he followed his guide into the forest.
CHAPTER XLIV.
They had been traveling silently for some hours, when the forest opened, and an arm of the mountain which divides the Umea Lappmark lay before them, in all its awful magnificence. Naked rocks and icebergs stretched up into the clouds, and the pale green vallies interspersed between the masses of stone, ice and snow, appeared as if nature was here already preparing for her long winter's repose.
At the moment when the wanderers had arrived at the foot of the first ascent, Arwed's guide, giving a shriek of terror, and pointing with a trembling hand towards a black fir-tree in the road, turned and fled so suddenly into the forest, that Arwed was soon obliged to give up all thoughts of calling him back. Surprised, he now looked toward the fir-tree which had caused the Laplander's panic. The view was sufficiently horrible. The bloody head of a Laplander was affixed to one of the under branches of the tree. Near it was suspended a tablet, upon which in large letters was inscribed--'Punishment of treachery to Naddock and his brethren.'
'Shameless insolence!' exclaimed Arwed, with indignation at the impudence of the robber, who, to screen his own crimes, had here executed a lawless penal judgment with Turkish barbarity. Approaching the tree, he long and sorrowfully examined the mute, pale, yellow face. 'Poor victim,' he exclaimed, 'how mournfully thou lookest down upon me, as if thou wouldst warn me from the path which probably led thee to death. It would indeed be hard for me so to end my life. Yet my second father must be saved, and it is unbecoming a man to turn back from an enterprise which he has once commenced. No, fearlessly and cheerfully will I go on, and if my undertaking succeed, thy death also shall find an avenger!'