"You ought to wait, and not attempt impossibilities. You know our mountains, and that nothing is to be done while the storm is raging thus. As soon as it subsides, as soon as the morning dawns, we will do all that men can do. To go out now would be worse than folly,--it would be madness!"
"Madness or not, it must be attempted!" Michael burst forth. "Do you imagine that I set the least value on my life weighed against hers? If I had to follow her to the summit of the Eagle ridge, where death seemed certain, I would either deliver her from peril or perish with her!"
Valentin clasped his hands in dismay. This burst of despair and anguish betrayed to him the well-guarded secret of which he had, indeed, within the last few minutes had some suspicion, and he exclaimed under his breath, "Can this be? Good God!"
Michael paid him no heed; he had turned to Wolfram, and said, hastily, "I need companions; we must search in different directions; will you go with me?"
"I? Now, when all the fiends of hell are loose in the mountains? The Wild Huntsman was never so furious in all the years I spent at the forest lodge."
"Infernal superstition!" muttered Rodenberg, stamping his foot. "Then go for the innkeeper; he is a good mountaineer and a brave man."
"That may be, but he'll not stir out in weather like this. He took his oath of that when some one spoke of it awhile ago, and he said a ton of gold would not tempt him, for he had a wife and children to take care of."
"Then I will go alone. Send help after me as soon as the morning dawns. Let the innkeeper and a party take the road towards the mountain chapel, which I shall follow, and pursue it to the Eagle ridge, if necessary. You, Wolfram, with some others, search the forest around the lodge, your former domain. Your reverence will please to have the road gone over again as far as to the spot where the accident occurred. Summon the whole village to help. I have no more time to lose."
In spite of his terrible agitation, he spoke in the energetic tone of command which he was wont to use to his subordinates, and as he hastily left the room the forester looked after him with a bewildered air, evidently greatly impressed.
"He has learned how to command. That's plain!" he said, in an undertone. "He behaves as if the entire village belonged to his regiment and had to obey orders. Queer! My Herr Count was just so. Michael's look and tone are just like his; he might have learned them from him, or have been his son. There's something queer in it, your reverence; it looks like witchcraft."