“Jerome! Holy Saint Jerome! I am wicked, but have pity. I am afraid of the great woods! Oh, in mercy lead me back!”
Her shrill cry went out in mocking echoes from an unseen dell. Not a thrush called in answer. She sank into frightened silence. After long waiting she gathered courage to summon Witch Martha, but that good woman never came. At last Agnes, made calm by desperation, took counsel.
“I cannot stay here. I have nothing to eat. And I dare not die of hunger, for if I die, where is the priest to anoint me with the oil, and absolve my fearful sins? So I can never go to heaven. The woods cannot reach forever. No matter which way I go, sooner or later, I must come to some house of Christian folk who will pity me. Only I must walk a straight line and never turn back.”
At least walking was easier than still agony; and she thrust boldly in among the trees. Before long she could quench her thirst in a tiny brook which sang along through hazel thickets. Then presently her heart gave a big throb. She was upon a path, weed-grown, leaf-strewn, yet a path, blazed through the forest. Surely it led to men, but whether a turn to right or left would reach a refuge soonest, Maid Agnes did not know. Therefore she made bold, despite her wickedness, to say a little prayer to Our Lady, asking her to guide the choice, shut her own eyes, and on one foot whirled around six times; then when she looked again, followed the way which lay straight before her. She might have walked the tenth of a league before a clearing burst into view,—walls, fruit trees, a garden, and an orchard, but everywhere silence and desolation. Here was the blackened foundation of a house and of two large barns, charred and rotting timbers, grass growing in the chinks of the mortar. The dwelling had been burned these two years. Yet Agnes was vastly comforted. The cherry trees of the orchard were heavy with round red fruit. A beam had fallen so that she could reach to a lower bough and pluck her fill. From the wild garden a linnet rose, interrupted in her feast of strawberries. Agnes had these too. The roses were climbing up the blackened wall, and the huge bees hung over them. Gorgeous butterflies spread their sails, and were wafted to and fro. But for the absolute solitude and the compelling fear, Agnes would have found this ruin the outer door to paradise. The sun had risen clear and warm, and the wood was giving forth the fragrant smell of green things growing. She ate cherries and strawberries until hunger was banished; then at last came time to consider “what next?” For no human help seemed here.
She was sitting upon the beam, her head on two small hands, when a man’s shout startled her like a thunderclap.
“Heigh-ho! Have we here a Queen of the Pixies?”
Agnes looked up, and behold a man stood by, but not a steel-capped lanzknecht of Ulrich as first fears told her. The stranger was a short, wiry man, very black, with a huge mustache, a beard cut to a most singular little peak. He was all dressed in untanned doeskin; a hunting-bag slung on his shoulder; in his belt gleamed twenty steel-tipped bolts; in his hand was a crossbow. He did not look at all fierce, and Agnes put on dignity.
“I am the daughter of Graf Ludwig of the Harz, and am lost in the forest. Place me in safety, and my father will reward you.”
“Graf Ludwig! By Saint Lorenz!” The little man made the greenwood ring with laughter. “I have distinguished company on my domain. And how came you to get lost?”
But alas! the story which Maid Agnes told her new friend was too wandering to seem to have overmuch truth in it,—Saint Jerome, the Abbess, and Baron Ulrich, all jumbled hopelessly together. The fellow was only certain that a very rare bird had fluttered by a miracle into his net, and he was bound not to lose such gay feathers. So he merely took her by the hand, saying:—