"To a cellar," replied the forester, with some embarrassment.
"Is it arched?"
"I will take you down, if you will come alone."
"Wait for us," cried Anton to his companions in the room.
The forester lit a lantern, carefully bolted the door, and went first with the light.
"I had not thought," said he, "that any eyes but mine would see my secret in my lifetime."
A few steps led them into a narrow vault, one side of which had been broken through, and a low subterranean passage made, supported by stems of trees triangularly placed.
"That is my run," said the forester, holding the candle down, "and it leads into the young wood. It is more than forty yards long, and I was a great while excavating it. This is the way I creep in and out unobserved; and I may thank it that I am here still, for this is why the stupid villagers believe me a sorcerer. When they have watched me go into the house, and think they may steal in safely, I suddenly appear among them. Two years ago a band of them broke into my house, and it would have been all up with me but that I slunk out here like a badger. Do not betray to any one what I have just shown you."
Anton promised that he would not, and they went back into the little inclosure, where they found Karl occupied in fastening, between four blocks that he had driven into the ground, the wooden trough of a young fox. The fox, insensible to this delicate attention on the part of the hussar, snarled at him, rattled his chain, and tried all it could, under the board that Karl had placed across its kennel, to get at his hands.
"Do you want to kiss my hands, little red-head?" cried Karl, hammering away. "You are a pretty fellow! What a pair of soft truthful eyes you have, to be sure! Now, there, it's done; jump backward and forward as much as you like. He does what's told him, forester; a good-natured beast—something of your own character, comrade."