been standing. Like the latter she kept her eyes on the window of the staff-house. She was a little disappointed but at the same time very proud of standing guard like this.
VI
Forester Kniebusch wandered along slowly, gun on back, through the dark forest. The full moon was already fairly high, but here below, among the tree trunks, its rays made visibility only more uncertain. The forester knew the forest just as a townsman knows his house; he had walked here at all hours of the day and night. He knew every bend of the path, every juniper bush which—eerily like a ghost—appeared amidst the trunks of lofty pine trees. He knew that the rustling he had heard came from a hedgehog hunting for mice, but even though everything was familiar, he did not like going through the wood
The forest had remained unchanged for ages, but the times had changed and the men with them. To be sure, there had also been timber thieves in the past. Yet they had always been the same questionable characters whose business was shady and whose reputation was even shadier. One had caught them, they were what they were, and because they were like that, they landed in jail. It hadn’t been necessary to get worried about them; in the end it was they who always did the worrying and paid the penalty of their misdeeds.
But had there been such a thing in the past as a whole village, man by man and house by house, going off to steal wood? You ran about and watched and worried yourself to death, and if you eventually caught one of them, then you were either seized with fear of revenge or with a feeling of shame that such a man should have joined thieves.
In the days of Forester Kniebusch’s youth, during his first years in Neulohe forest, there had been a notorious poacher in the district: Muller-Thomas, who afterwards hanged himself in his cell in Meienburg prison. With this fellow there had been a long life-and-death struggle. Cunning had fought against cunning and strength against strength, but it had been a struggle with more or less the same weapons.… Today, however, they went “hunting” in swarms, with army pistols and rifles! They started the game wherever they found it; they spared no pregnant female animal or one suckling its young—they shot at pheasants, even at partridges, with bullets! If they had poached for poaching’s sake like Muller-Thomas, or for a joint to still their hunger, that wouldn’t have been so bad. But, murderers that they were, they killed simply from the desire to kill. Murderers and destroyers!
The old man had now left the dense part of the forest and was walking along a small glade between plantations of pine trees. The little trees were fifteen years old; they should have been thinned out two or three years ago, but one could not get the men. So the plantations had become impenetrable thickets, a mass of thorny branches, uprooted trees fallen in all directions. Even in the daytime one could scarcely see three yards into them. Now in the moonlight they stood there like a black wall.… Whoever had an enemy coming along this path need only conceal himself in the thicket and he could not possibly miss his man. In vain the forester told himself that no one could be expecting to see him coming along this glade now; this was a quite unforeseen errand he was on, and had he kept his mouth shut it would never have come about. So no one could possibly be lying in wait for him in the thicket.
And yet he walked stealthily. He knew where the mossy patches ran, on which one could walk softly, and whenever a twig cracked under his foot he stood still and peered around with beating heart. He had long since put his pipe in his pocket, for one can smell tobacco a long way off in the forest; and he held his three-barreled gun ready to shoot, for even an uncertain shot was better than none at all. He was a very old man. He would much rather have gone into retirement long ago, but that had not been possible. And now he had to walk among the plantations at night because a silly girl couldn’t take care of her heart and her letters. It was a thoroughly foolish business. He wouldn’t be able to spot the buck, and if he did he would miss it. And should he be able to bring it down that wouldn’t be anything—neither the Rittmeister nor his wife would have been surprised if Fraulein Violet said that her stalking expedition had been in vain. “You see, you would have done much better to stay in bed, Vi,” was the most the Rittmeister would have said, and teased her a little.
But no, they didn’t think of that. They actually sent him off after the buck; he had to chase around while the three of them settled their business with that cursed Meier. Whom did they have to thank for their information? Why, himself! Who had got this conceited, thoughtless Lieutenant away from Haase? Why, he himself! And then this young prig could say uppishly: “We don’t need you here, Kniebusch. You go off and shoot the buck. But don’t go playing the fool here among the bushes; otherwise I’ll have something to say to you!”
Fraulein Violet had stood there, she had heard every word of this arrogant speech. She might have been a little grateful to an old man, but no, she merely said: “Yes, do that, Kniebusch, and try and see that I have something to show Papa tomorrow.”
So there was nothing to say except: “Certainly, Fraulein,” and about face into the woods. Therefore he would never learn what did actually happen to Bailiff Meier tonight. Meier would certainly not open his mouth, Rader the manservant would also keep mum, tomorrow the Lieutenant would have disappeared as if blown away, and Fraulein Violet wasn’t one for telling things, however much she liked having things told to her.
Then what had resulted from that calculated tale-bearing which was to have benefited him so much? A nocturnal stalk through the forest and the undying hatred of little Meier! And he could be a really poisonous toad when he was angry.
Forester Kniebusch stood still, sighing. He mopped his brow—it was hot, very hot. But it was not the sultry damp heat in the forest which made him so warm, it was annoyance with himself. For the thousandth, for the ten- thousandth time in his life, he swore firmly to see and hear nothing of whatever might happen to come to his knowledge. He would just go his own way in the few years that he had still to live; he would never again be wise and clever and cunning and calculating. Never again!
As if putting a period after this immovable resolution a shot resounded through the forest, like an “Amen” in church.
The forester started, listening without moving a foot. It was a rifle shot: the crack was sharp like the crack of a whip. And it was the rifle shot of a poacher. For who else could be abroad in the forest at this time?
These two things were certain; but the forester could not decide quite so certainly the direction from which the shot came. The lofty forest wall round the glade re-echoed the sound hither and thither, playing ball with it. Yet the forester could almost have sworn that the report came from the direction in which he was going, from Haase’s field where Fraulein Violet’s buck was browsing. Someone else had fired at it.
The forester had not moved from the spot where he had stopped to mop his brow and heard the shot. He was in no hurry. He was filled with an iron determination. He was a man, he did just what he wanted and nothing else. Slowly he hung his gun over his shoulder, slowly he drew his short pipe from his pocket, filled it and, after a little hesitation, struck a match. Puffing strongly, he carefully pressed the tobacco down once again, snapping-to the nickel lid of his pipe and set off. Purposefully and steeled with determination, he walked steadily away from the place where the shot had rung out. Don’t scald your lips in another man’s pottage. Amen.
Yet the fact is that some people, whether they like it or not, are forever pursued by new events, while others wander through life and hear nothing, getting their bread only when it is stale. The forester, after all, had made not the slightest effort in the afternoon to find out about Fraulein Violet’s letter. On the contrary, he had turned from Meier’s babbling with abhorrence, not wanting to listen to his loathsome bragging—and yet he had learned everything about it.
The forester who smoked so contentedly as he put distance between himself and the poacher, with a grin at his own cunning, was very calmly resolved to traverse slowly the least dangerous parts of the forest until he could quite credibly affirm that every effort and every patient endeavor had been in vain—there was no buck to shoot. This old coward of a Kniebusch, however, was condemned to shoot his buck, and without a rifle!
For the new event from which he so zealously fled came rapidly cycling between the lofty pines down a defile which no moonlight could brighten. Up this defile walked the forester, smoking.
The impact was violent. But while for Kniebusch there was enough soft sand to spare for his old bones, a large rock lay waiting for the cyclist, who struck it first with his shoulder, at which he let loose a powerful oath, although he didn’t know then that his collarbone was fractured. Next his cheek passed over the rough stone so that the skin was scraped off and the raw flesh burned like fire. But this he hardly noticed, for his temple had made the acquaintance of a sharp-edged projection, and a temple is just as sensitive as sleep—both are easily wounded by disturbance. The cyclist, already lapsing into unconsciousness, groaned and was heard no more.
Worthy Forester Kniebusch sat in the sand rubbing the thigh which had borne the brunt of the collision. He would very much have liked to see the other man get on his bicycle and set off again. He, Kniebusch, would have
