The cold bit my cheeks, the snow creaked under the snow-shoes; I rode on lonely through the forest and over the heights. I rode all along the ridge of the Hochbürstling, where even in summer I had never yet been. Now and again, when progress was too deliberate, I pressed my knees into the yielding flesh, and my horse took it all in good part, going on as well as ever he could—there was no doubt about his knowing the way! I rode past a post whereon, summer and winter, that holy patron of cattle, St. Erhardi, stood. I knew St. Erhardi at home, he and I between us had charge of my father's herd. He was always much carefuller than I: if a cow came to grief, I the herdboy was blamed; if the others throve, St. Erhardi got the credit for it.—It did my heart good he should see that I had become a horseman while he stood there nailed to his post for ever and ever.
At last our path took a turn and I began riding downwards over stumps and stones, making towards a little light that glimmered in the valley below. And just when all the trees and places had passed me by and I had nothing but the dark mass with the one little pane of shining light before me, my good Christopher came to a halt and said, "Now look here, my dear boy—seeing as how I'm a stranger to you and you've come with me like this without taking thought what you were doing—how d'you know that I mayn't have got a life-long grudge against your father and am just now going to carry you into a robbers' den?"
I listened a moment. Then, as he added nothing to these words, I answered in the same tone:
"Considering my father trusted me to Frau Drachenbinder's man and that I've come with him like this, it's not likely Drachenbinder's man has got a grudge against us, and he won't carry me into a robbers' den."
At these words of mine the man snorted into his beard, and soon after he lowered me on to the stump of a tree, saying, "And now here we are at Frau Drachenbinder's house."
He opened a door in the dark mass and went in.
The small living-room had a stove with glowing embers on it, a burning pine-splinter,[6] and a straw bed with a child asleep on it. Near it stood a woman, very old and bent and with a face as pallid and creased as the coarse nightgown she was wearing. As we entered, this person uttered a strange cry, a sort of crowing, began to laugh violently, and then hid herself behind the stove.
"That's Frau Drachenbinder," remarked my guide. "She'll soon come and speak to you, and meantime you sit down there on the stool near the bed and put on your shoes again."
I did what he bade me, and he seated himself on a block of wood near by.
When the woman became composed, she moved lightly about the stove and soon brought us a steaming grey meal-soup in an earthenware pot, and two bone spoons with it. My man ate solemnly and steadily, but I couldn't quite fancy it. Then he got up and said softly to me, "Sleep well, boy!" and went away. And when I found myself alone in the close room with the sleeping child and the old woman I began to feel downright creepy.