The person thus addressed, sitting on the end of the table with his legs crossed, looked at me and began:
"This morning, as I was coming down the Altenberg, I followed the hollow Nideck road. The snow was on a level with its edges. I was going along, thinking of nothing in particular, when a foot-track caught my eye; it was deep, and went straight across the path; the creature had come down one side of the bank and gone up on the other. It wasn't a hare's foot, for that makes hardly any mark in the snow; nor the cloven hoof of the wild boar, nor a wolf's paw either; it was a deep hole. I stopped and brushed away the snow that was collecting round it. It was the Black Plague's track!"
"How do you know that?"
"How do I know it? I know the old hag's footprint better than her figure, for I always go along with my eyes on the ground. I can recognize any one in the country around by his foot-tracks, and a child couldn't have mistaken this one."
"What was there about it so very different from any other?"
"It is no larger than your hand; it is finely shaped, the heel a trifle long, the outline clean, and the great toe lies close to the others, as if they were pressed into a slipper. It is a beautiful foot. Twenty years ago, monsieur, I should have fallen in love with such a foot! Every time I come across one like it, it makes a great impression on me. Heavens! how can such a foot belong to the Black Plague?" And the good fellow fixed his eyes on the floor with a dismal air.
"Well, Sebalt, go on!" said Sperver impatiently.
"To be sure! Well, I recognized the track, and I set out to follow it. I was in hopes of catching the witch in her den, but you shall hear what a dance she led me. I climbed up the roadside, only two gunshots from Nideck, and struck off into the bushes, keeping the trail always on my right; it ran along the edge of the Rhethal. Suddenly it jumped over the ditch into the woods. I kept on, but happening to glance a little to the left of it, I discovered another track that had been following the Black Plague's. I stopped; 'Could it be Sperver's? or Kasper Trumpf's? or any of the other people's?' I asked myself. I stooped over and examined it closely, and you can fancy my surprise when I saw that it belonged to nobody in this part of the country. I know every footprint from here to Tübingen, and it was none of these. The owner must have come from a distance. The boot—for it was a kind of soft, well-made boot, with a spur that left a little rowelled line in the snow behind it—instead of being rounded at the end, was square; the sole, thin and without nails, bent at every step. The pace was short and hurried, like that of a man from twenty to twenty-five. I noticed the stitches in the leather at this glance, and I have never seen finer."
"Who could it have been?"
Sperver shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.