Again she waited for a long time for some of the dwellers of this little house to draw near, and again she waited in vain; even by eventide not a human being had approached the hut.
These hut dwellers must be curious folks she thought, they leave everything unlocked, evil disposed people might steal everything.
On the way back she met some charcoal burners and asked them about the lonely little house in the midst of the forest. Three of the four pretended not to understand: they did not remember ever seeing such a house they said. The fourth, however, told the lady in reply that in that house dwelt "Dracu."[51]
[51] The Devil.
This only made Henrietta more than ever curious. She asked the priest about it and even he was inclined to be evasive. He evidently either knew nothing about it or was casting about in his mind for some plausible explanation. At last he said that rumour had it that a huntsman's family had either been murdered or had committed suicide there, and, ever since, nobody dwelling in the district could be persuaded to cross its threshold, let alone steal anything out of it; they would not even take shelter there during a storm, for they believed that an evil spirit dwelt there.
Henrietta, however, did not believe in these invisible evil spirits. The evil spirits she was acquainted with all went about in dress clothes and surtouts. The atmosphere of mystery and enchantment which made the little house uninhabitable only stimulated her fancy. She determined to discover whether it was really uninhabited or not.
Accordingly, when she entered the house for the third time, she plucked a wild rose and threw one of its buds into the pitcher of water on the table, a second on the bear skin coverlet of the bed and a third, fourth and fifth she stuck into the barrels of the muskets hanging up in the armour room.
When now, she visited the lonely house for the fourth time, she looked for the rose buds and could not find one of them in the places where she had put them. Consequently there must needs be someone who slept in the bed, drank the fresh water from the pitcher and used the firearms.
Her thirst for knowledge now induced her to enquire of her husband concerning this little dwelling and he, then and there, elucidated the mystery.
It was quite true that a lonely inhabitant of this house had once been murdered there, that the common people believed it to be haunted, and that consequently not one of them would cross its threshold at any price either by day or by night. An old landed proprietor from the mining town of X., who owned a small strip of forest in those parts and was at the same time an enthusiastic huntsman, had taken advantage of this popular superstition to buy this little house, for a mere song. He used it as a hunting box. He could not afford to keep a huntsman of his own to look after it and knowing that if he locked it up, thieves would most probably break into it and steal everything, he left the doors wide open and everyone instantly avoided it as uncanny. The reason Henrietta never met him was that this old gentleman was a government official, who had to live most of his time in the town of Klausenburg, but whenever he was not hunting here he was out in the forests all night till dawn when he turned into the little house for a nap and was off again before the afternoon; and so Henrietta who regularly visited the hut in the afternoon, naturally never encountered him.