that he might shoot it. The host of the Lamb down in the town needed
game, for his Gretel was to be married on Tuesday. True, Marx could kill
the animal himself, but Ulrich had learned to shoot too, and if the place
whence the game came should be noised abroad, the charcoal-burner,
without any scruples of conscience, could swear that he did not shoot
the buck, but found it with the arrow in its heart.

People called the charcoal-burner a poacher, and he owed his ill-name of
"Hangemarx" to the circumstance that once, though long ago, he had
adorned a gallows. Yet he was not a dishonest man, only he remembered
too faithfully the bold motto, which, when a boy, one peasant wood-cutter
or charcoal-burner whispered to another:

"Forest, stream and meadow are free."

His dead father had joined the Bundschuh,--[A peasants' league which
derived its name from the shoe, of peculiar shape, worn by its members.]
--adopted this motto, and clung fast to it and with it, to the belief
that every living thing in the forest belonged to him, as much as to the
city, the nobles, or the monastery. For this faith he had undergone much
suffering, and owed to it his crooked mouth and ill name, for just as his
beard was beginning to grow, the father of the reigning count came upon
him, just after he had killed a fawn in the "free" forest. The legs of
the heavy animal were tied together with ropes, and Marx was obliged to
take the ends of the knot between his teeth like a bridle, and drag the
carcass to the castle. While so doing his cheeks were torn open, and the
evil deed neither pleased him nor specially strengthened his love for the
count. When, a short time after, the rebellion broke out in Stuhlingen,
and he heard that everywhere the peasants were rising against the monks
and nobles, he, too, followed the black, red and yellow banner, first