"Who can have any object in following the old woman?" I asked Sperver.
"No one on earth can tell," was the reply.
And so we sat a few minutes meditating over what we had heard.
At last he went on again with his narrative:--
"I kept following the track; it went up the next ridge through the
pine-forest. When it doubled round the Koche Fendue I said to myself,
'Ah, you accursed plague! If there was much game of your sort there would
not be much sport; it would be preferable to work like a nigger!' So we
all three arrive--the two tracks and I--at the top of the Schneeberg.
There the wind had been blowing hard; the snow was knee-deep--but no
matter! I must get on! I got to the edge of the torrent of the Steinbach,
and there I lost the track. I halted, and I saw that, after trying up and
down in several directions, the gentleman's boots had gone down the
Tiefenbach. That was a bad sign. I looked along the other side of the
torrent, but there was no appearance of a track there--none at all! The
old hag had paddled up and down the stream to throw any one off the scent
who should try to follow her. Where was I to go to?--right, or left, or
straight on? Not knowing, I came back to Nideck.
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