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No sign of his father had he seen, and boy though he was, he knew too much of the dangers that attend a wood-cutter's life in the Forest not to fear that some evil might have befallen his father; but he had a brave young heart, and tried to comfort his mother. "He'll be coming soon now, Mütterchen," he said; "and won't he laugh at us for being so frightened?"
I was in the cabin of the wood-cutter, with the two friends who never left me, when the wood-cutter's daughter came running in, alarmed, to tell us that a numerous company of soldiers were advancing towards the wood, and appeared to be in search of the house where I was concealed. 'Here they are! she exclaimed. 'They are coming to kill you! O, may God save you!
Nothing would persuade him to go a step further. The wood-cutter's hut suited him, so did the wood-cutter himself, and so, as he said, did the region around him.
He was a solitary old fellow, but imbued with that virtue of hospitality which is inculcated so much among the people. Having replied to the wood-cutter's first inquiry that he was "going yonder," Mamba now saw fit to explain that "yonder" meant Tamatave. "I want to see the great Missionary Ellis before he leaves the country." The wood-cutter shook his head. "You are too late, I fear.
"Wake up, old sleepy captain," she cried. Geoffrey got the boat ready; and Yaé prepared a picnic breakfast to be eaten on the way. Poor Reggie, of course, had work at the Embassy; he could not come. It was an ideal excursion. They reached Senju, the wood-cutter's village at the end of the lake.
Over the willow-brakes, and down the vista of the open street, bright new houses, some singly, some by ranks, were prying in upon the old man's privacy. They even settled down toward his southern side. First a wood-cutter's hut or two, then a market gardener's shanty, then a painted cottage, and all at once the faubourg had flanked and half surrounded him and his dried-up marsh.
The subject of these reflections had meanwhile lighted his silver-mounted meerschaum, and was puffing contentedly in the intervals of animated chat, apparently quite satisfied with his position and prospective hardships, not giving a thought to the humble accommodations of his friends' shanty; which, on the first entrance, had contracted in Robert's vision into a mere wood-cutter's hut, devoid of every elegance and most of the comforts of civilised life.
"Nursing his injuries at some wood-cutter's camp, no doubt; but God be praised for that double spirit of generosity and forgiveness which prompted our Poleon to spare the wretch. No finer thing have I known in all my life, Doret, even though you have ever been an ungodly fellow." The Frenchman moved uneasily. "Wal, I don' know; he ain' fight so dam' hard."
Tears rose to the wood-cutter's eyes, as lifting the child in his arms he entered the hut, and leaving Frida there with Hans, he beckoned his wife to speak to him outside; and there he told her the story of the man who had died in Johann's cottage. "Ah, then," said Elsie, "the little Frida is indeed an orphan, poor lambie. How shall we tell her, Wilhelm? Her little heart will break.
He called out but got no answer; and after listening for some time and hearing nothing further he returned to bed and at last fell asleep. In the morning he learned that the panther had made a daring raid on a hut and carried off a Bhuttia wood-cutter's baby from its sleeping mother's side, and had devoured it in the jungle not two hundred yards away.
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