The character of the region had suddenly and completely changed. Mountains, pine forests, and roaring waterfalls succeeded one another in rapid succession.
The numerous company sat them down on the fresh grass at the foot of a shady tree by the side of a purling brook, and everyone produced his knapsack, his wallet, or his flask. The wealthier of them shared their good fare with the students, who expressed their thankfulness by singing merry songs. There was one student who particularly distinguished himself by his facetiousness, and whom everyone called Simplex. He, too, introduces himself under that very name in his contemporary memoirs, from which we have borrowed many of the data of this our veracious history. He was an itinerant student, drummer, and trumpeter, and a wag and good fellow to boot. He soon succeeded in gaining Henry's goodwill, and he also favored the young bride with his company from time to time, taking the whip out of the hands of the sleepy driver and rating him soundly in Polish, which the other endured without a murmur.
The jests of Simplex put the company in high good-humor. Even Michal caught the contagion of the general merriment. The spicy, fresh air seemed to relieve her mind of sorrow.
Suddenly, on reaching the summit of a lofty mountain, another panorama unfolded itself before their eyes. The steep mountain wall was succeeded by a deep glen, and the tops of the huge pine trees massed together below seemed to the naked eye to be a meadow of a wonderful green perpetually in motion. In the distance arose lofty rocks, piled one above the other and split up by chasms full of ice and snow. The path wound steeply down into this glen, where it was already night, and by the side of the path ran a mountain stream, which, pouring forth from the crevices of the granite rocks, plunged downward in a hundred glistening columns like a crystal organ.
But it was not this splendid sight, but another, very strange and very terrible, on the other side of the way, which riveted pretty Michal's attention.
In the crevice of a projecting rock a lofty stake had been firmly planted; on the top of the stake was a wheel, and on the wheel lay something distantly resembling the shape of a man. The hands and feet hung loosely down; the neck and skull were thrown backward and reclined half over the tire of the wheel. Large black birds swept slowly round and round, and though startled by the approaching hub-bub were not scared away.
It never so much as entered into pretty Michal's mind what this strange object could be, she had absolutely no name for it.
"What's that?" cried she with a shudder, involuntarily reining up her mule.
But Henry was not there to answer her question. He had ridden on in advance with the students, who had now begun to sing in order to cheer the caravan during its perilous descent into the glen.
"That is the sign-post of the glen," said the driver; "don't look in that direction, my lady!"