Maître Bernard Hertzog had slept a couple of hours, and the boiling of the water in the millrace alone competed with the noise of his loud snoring, when suddenly a guttural voice, arising in the midst of the deep silence, cried—
"Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel! have you forgotten everything?"
The voice was so piercing that Maître Bernard, waking with a sudden start, felt his hair creeping with horror. He raised himself upon his elbow and listened again with eyes starting with astonishment. The hut was as dark as a cellar; he listened, but not a breath, not a sound, came; only far away, far beyond the ruins, a dull, distant roar was heard among the mountains.
Bernard, with neck outstretched, heaved a deep sigh; in a minute he began to stammer out—
"Who is there? What do you want?"
But no answer came.
"It was a dream," he said, falling back upon his heather couch. "I must have been lying upon my back. There is nothing at all in dreams and nightmares—nothing! nothing!"
But in the midst of the restored silence the same doleful cry was again repeated—
"Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel!"
And as Maître Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch, the voice, in a dissonant chant, with pauses and strange accents, went on—