In a kind of half-dream, he climbed a little hill; he fancied he heard the lively barking of a dog somewhere near him. Tall chestnuts rustled in the wind, and he caught the strange wild strains of a song:
"In my forest-home
Again sing I,
Where pain hath no life;
No envy and strife.
Oh, am I not happy
In my forest home?"
Egbert was completely stupified, his senses reeled; all seemed a dark painful riddle to him. He could not tell whether he was dreaming now, or whether he had not dreamt of a Bertha as his wife. The common and the wonderful were so strangely mingled together; the world round him was enchanted.... His thoughts and recollections swam confusedly before his mind.
A crooked hump-backed old woman came panting up the hill with a crutch.
"Are you come to bring me my bird? my pearls? my dog?" she screamed to him; "see how wickedness is its own punisher! I was your friend Walters—I was Hugo."
"God in heaven," muttered Egbert to himself, "to what dreadful place have I wandered? Where am I?"
"And Bertha was your sister."
Egbert fell to the ground.
"What made her run away from me in that way? the time of trial was almost over, and thus all had ended well. She was the daughter of a knight; he sent her to the herdsman to be brought up. She was your father's daughter."
"Oh, why, why have I ever had this dreadful foreboding?" cried Egbert.