The discontented face brightened up considerably, and so he went down to let out the hounds. The blood-hound and the beagle jumped up gaily, and the little beaver-puppy also set up a joyous bark, hoping to be taken out likewise; but with a contemptuous kick it was sent back, for the hunter had nothing to do with fish-ponds and their inhabitants. Surrounded by his noisy pack of hounds, Romeias strode out of the gate.
Praxedis and the other waiting-women of the Duchess, had dismounted from their horses and seated themselves on a grassy slope, chatting away about monks and cowls and beards, as well as about the strange caprices of their mistress, when Romeias suddenly appeared before them and said: "Come on!"
Praxedis looked at the rough sports-man, and not quite knowing, what to make of him, pertly said: "Where to, my good friend?"--
Romeias however merely lifted his spear and pointing with it to a neighbouring hill behind the woods, held his tongue.
Then Praxedis called out: "Is speech such a rare article in St. Gall, that you do not answer properly when questioned?"
The other maids giggled, upon which Romeias said solemnly: "May you all be swallowed up by an earthquake, seven fathom deep."
"We are very much obliged to you, good friend," was Praxedis's reply, and the necessary preliminaries for a conversation being thus made, Romeias informed them of the commission he had received, and the women followed him willingly enough.
After some time the gate-keeper found out, that it was not the hardest work to accompany such guests, and when the Greek maid, desired to know something about his business and sport, his tongue got wonderfully loosened and he even related his great adventure with the terrible boar, into whose side he had thrown his spear and yet had not been able to kill it, for one of its feet would have loaded a cart, and its hair stood up as high as a pine-tree, and its teeth were twelve feet long at the least. After this he grew still more civil, for when the Greek once stopped, to listen to the warbling of a thrush, he waited also patiently enough, though a singing-bird was too miserable a piece of game for him to give much heed to; and when Praxedis bent down for a pretty brass-beetle, crawling about in the moss, Romeias politely tried to push it towards her, with his heavy boot, and when in doing so he crushed it instead, this was certainly not his intention.
They climbed up a wild, steep wood-path, beside which the Schwarza-brook flowed over jagged rocks. On that slope the holy Gallus had once fallen into some thorny bushes, and had said to his companion, who wanted to lift him up: "Here let me lie, for here shall be my resting-place and my abode for ever."
They had walked far, before they came to a clearing in the fir-wood, where leaning against the sheltering rocks stood a simple chapel in the shape of a cross. Close to it a square little stone-hut was built against the rock in which but one tiny window with a wooden shutter, was to be seen. Opposite there stood another hut exactly like it, having also but one little window.