Wally did not recover consciousness, she lay in a fever; her throat was swelled, her limbs stiff and aching. The brother and sister soon saw that the stranger must have suffered terribly from cold and over-fatigue, and they tended her to the best of their powers. Leander meanwhile wandered idly and restlessly through the house, and as often as one of them came out of the sick room he was in the way to enquire how things were going on. He was full of grief and vexation; he also would so willingly have tended the beautiful girl. Towards evening it ceased snowing, and he took his rifle and went out. But he had scarcely been away a minute when he came back again and called Nicodemus from the sick room. "Look here," he said, much excited, "there is a vulture on the roof, a splendid golden vulture, and he looks at me quite quietly and confidingly, as though he belonged there."
"Ah!" said Nicodemus, "that is singular."
"Only come and see," said Leander, and drew his brother out, in front of the house. "There--there he sits and never moves. A state prize, and I can't shoot him! The devil take it all!"
"Why can't thou shoot him?" asked Nicodemus.
"How can I fire now, with the sick girl lying indoors?" said Leander, stamping his foot.
"Drive him away," advised Nicodemus, "and then thou can follow him and shoot him further off where she cannot hear."
"Tsch, tsch," said Leander, throwing up balls of snow to scare off the bird. The vulture ruffled his feathers, screamed, and at last rose. But he did not fly away, he floated for a minute high in the air, and then quietly let himself down on to the roof again.
"That is strange, he won't go away; it's just as if he were tame."
Once, twice more they tried to drive it off--always with the same result.
"He's bewitched," said Leander, making the sign of the cross; but it did not seem to trouble the bird--so it was certain the devil could have nothing to do with it!