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Updated: June 6, 2025
'Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon! they all muttered in under-tones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went out into the maids' room.
"The legend I have heard differs from yours," observed the Duke of Richmond: "it runs that the spirit by which the forest is haunted is a wood-demon, who assumes the shape of the ghostly hunter, and seeks to tempt or terrify the keepers to sell their souls to him." "Your grace's legend is the better of the two," said Lady Mary Howard, "or rather, I should say, the more probable.
The little creature looked so unnaturally wise and self-possessed that I was reminded perforce of a wild tale Wyanota had once told me about a remote ancestress of his who had married some sort of a wood-demon. The legend ran that Wyanota's family was descended from the offspring of this marriage, and I think Wyn more than half believed the story.
Having had some fears before of the Wood-Demon having been offended by one of the family, Erica regarded this accident as a token of his vengeance. She said this when she first heard of her mother's death; and no reasonings from the zealous pastor of the district, no soothing from her mistress, could shake her persuasion.
On her way homewards, Erica remembered that this was Midsummer Eve, a season when her mother was in her thoughts more than at any other time, for Midsummer Eve is sacred in Norway to the Wood-Demon, whose victim she believed her mother to have been.
In this hirsute personage, who was intended to represent the wood-demon, Hobthurst, Nicholas again detected Jem Device, and again was strongly tempted to disobey Nance's injunctions, and denounce him the rather that he recognised in an attendant female, in a fantastic dress, the ruffian's mother, Elizabeth; but he once more desisted.
She listened with submission, wiping away her quiet tears as they discoursed; but no one could ever get her to say that she doubted whether there was a Wood-Demon, or that she was not afraid of what he would do if offended. Erlingsen and his wife always treated her superstition as a weakness; and when she was not present, they ridiculed it. Yet they saw that it had its effect on their daughters.
"Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon!" they all muttered in undertones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went out into the maid's room.
Of course we were very near both shores at all times, for the river is so narrow that a small boy could throw a ball over it; but occasionally the deeper part of the channel flowed so near one shore that we ran right up close to the trees, and the branches flapped up against the people on the little forward deck, making the ladies, especially the lady belonging to the yellow-legged party, crouch and scream as if some wood-demon had stuck a hand into the boat and made a grab for their bonnets.
And in the whirl of the waltz she tried to forget the last words Rolf had spoken; but they rang in her ears; and before her eyes were images of Nipen overhearing this defiance, and the Water-sprite planning vengeance in its palace under the ice, and the Mountain-Demon laughing in scorn, till the echoes shouted again, and the Wood-Demon waiting only for summer to see how he could beguile the rash lover.
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