"Do you see anything near?"

"No."

"Well, there is a reason for that. You have driven away the Black Plague!
Every year at the second attack there she was holding her feet between
her hands. By night she lighted a fire; she warmed herself and boiled
roots. She bore a curse with her. This morning the very first thing which
I did was to get up here. I climbed up the beacon tower; I looked well
all round; the old hag was nowhere to be seen. I shaded my eyes with my
hand. I looked up and down, right and left, and everywhere; not a sign of
the creature anywhere. She had scented you evidently."

And the good fellow, in a fit of enthusiasm, shook me warmly by the hand,
crying with unchecked emotion--

"Ah, Fritz, how glad I am that I brought you here! The witch _will_ be
sold, eh?"

Well, I confess I felt a little ashamed that I had been all my life
such a very well-deserving young man without knowing anything of the
circumstance myself.

"So, Sperver," I said, "the count has spent a good night?"

"A very good one."

"Then I am very well pleased. Let us go down."