Keane shook his head as though he disagreed with his companion, and remarked in a low voice, "The creature was evidently startled or it would not have fled like that. Its scent is very keen, and as the wind is blowing from the west, it suspected danger from that quarter."
CHAPTER XVI
THE GHOSTLY VISITANT
A few moments later the two men were startled by the sound of a human voice, trolling out the words of some German folk-song, and approaching from the same quarter towards the clearing.
"This is our man," exclaimed Keane, as he removed the screen from the fire and stirred the dying embers into a cheerful blaze, piling on more dried twigs, so that the trees about the glade seemed to dance like fairies.
"Some woodman or peasant returning from a party," observed Sharpe.
"I wonder where his cottage is," replied his friend; "it must be somewhere in the neighbourhood."
"We must welcome him to a belated supper. Perhaps this good Rhine wine will open his lips still more, and he may tell us something about the birds of the Schwarzwald."
"Particularly the phantom-bird," facetiously observed Keane with a smile.
Nearer and nearer came the stranger, breaking occasionally into snatches of song, as though he would frighten away the goblins and weird creatures of the forest, for of the superstitious peoples of Europe, the peasantry of the Black Forest are most given to credulous beliefs. Perhaps this is because no other district of Europe is so rich in quaint legend, folklore and ghostly tradition.