And now the men work their way through the snow and underwood and see the little maiden and hurrah for joy; and old Rüpel, who is among them, shouts:
"Didn't I tell you to come and look in here with me,—that perhaps she was with the deer?"
And so it was; and when Berthold heard that the beasts of the forest had saved his child from being frozen to death, he yelled like a madman:
"Never again! As long as I live, never again!"
And he took the rifle with which for many years he had killed the beasts of the forest and smashed it on a stone.
I saw it myself; for I and the parish priest were in the Karwässer to help look for Lily-of-the-Forest.
This Lily-of-the-Forest is almost as soft and white as snow and has the eyes of a roe-deer in her little head.
XVIII
The Sacred Cornfield
(The translation of a chapter from "Jakob der Letzte," in which tragic story Rosegger tells how a rich man comes to a poor upland community, and gradually bribes and tricks all the peasants except Jacob—who after a dignified and then desperate effort to save the place, breaks his heart and goes mad—to part with their homes and holdings to him for deer-forest.)