"
"Why so?"
"Because the Pest has a habit every time she doubles of going three paces
to the right; then she retraces her steps four, five, or six in the other
direction, and jumps away into a clear place. But when she thinks she has
sufficiently disguised her trail she breaks out without troubling herself
to make any feints. There now! What did I say? Now she is burrowing
beneath the brushwood like a wild boar, and it won't be so difficult to
follow her up."
"Well, let us put the track between us and smoke a pipe."
We halted, and the honest fellow, whose countenance was beginning to
brighten up, looking up at me with enthusiasm, cried--
"Fritz, if we have luck this will be one of the finest days in my life.
If we catch the old hag I will strap her across my horse behind me like a
bundle of old rags. There is only one thing troubles me."
"And what is that?"
"That I forgot my bugle. I should have liked to have sounded the return
on getting near the castle! Ha, ha, ha!"
He lighted his stump of a pipe and we galloped off again.
The track of the she-wolf now passed on to the heights of the forest by
so steep an ascent that several times we had to dismount and lead our
horses by the bridle.
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