CHAPTER IX
HARUN KNOWS THE WAY
BEFORE the dawn the moon had gone down; the twinkling stars only made the vast night blacker. A wind was tumbling the forest boughs till they clashed and groaned like the spirits of lost souls. The fox was crouching in his covert, the sleepy redbreast in his hollow peered forth once to see if the dawn were near,—only blackness in the east, and the bird again hid his drowsy head. Yet there was life in the forest,—a living thing was moving. Here the twigs snapped; there a thorn-bush crackled. A deer was roving, or what else? Had any eyes pierced through the dark, they might have seen a form—a human form—thrusting across the thickets. Witch Martha seemed to need no eyes; if eyes she had, they were those of an owl or of an angel who saw the hidden things of the night. On her shoulders sat the two ravens, and once when she stumbled over a rotted bough the twain croaked out together, but she bade them “silence” in so sharp a voice that Zodok and Zebek kept their wisdom shut within their heads. Once Martha’s little body ceased its gliding, and she laid her head down to the ground and listened.
“I can hear it,—the gushing of the stream. I approach the Dragon’s Dale.”
Then with surer motion she went onward. Soon the leafy roof was breaking overhead. She saw the stars blink down at her. There was a clearing, and the traced outlines of a tiny hut. And Witch Martha stopped and looked about her.
No glow of embers from the door; no stir of human life. The long boughs above moaned out her only welcome. But of a sudden there was a stealthy footfall from the thicket, and then a whining cry, low and plaintive as a child in pain, but ending with a wild and brutish wail; and Martha turned quickly toward the sound, whilst the two ravens flapped and cawed again.
“Harun!” cried Martha; and again in answer came that wail. Then a dark form slipped out of the covert, a damp muzzle sniffed at Martha’s hands, into her face peered two great coals of fire,—the great wolf’s eyes,—and Harun whined with his delight.
“Gone; he is gone,” spoke Witch Martha. “They have borne St. Jerome to the Wartburg, and the little lady—she is vanished too.” To which Harun whined yet more.