Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/504

500 == THE WATERS OF HERCULES. PART IX. ==

CHAPTER XXVIII. A MODERN MARTYR.
"Wenn dud en steilen Berg ersteigst Wirst du beträchtlich ächzen." – Heine.

a fire which has smouldered so low as to have almost reached extinction, and of a sudden leaps into new flame, so did the half-forgotten robber-panic reawaken with tenfold strength, when one evening it became known that the Bohemian's milk-girl had been assaulted.

A man had burst through the bushes, while she was alone on the pathway; had first torn the coin-necklace from her throat, and flung it contemptuously to the ground, and had then wrenched her basket from her, and seizing on the fresh cheeses which it held, had disappeared again in the forest.

A robber who preferred milk-cheeses to gold coins could not belong to the most dangerous specimens of his kind; but by the time the story had made the round of the place, he had not only grown, but multiplied; and there seemed cause enough for the patrols to walk about with fixed bayonets, challenging every shadow, and taking each other into custody, in the name of the king.

"I do not see any logical grounds for giving up our plan," said Gretchen, on the evening of the event, while the red-hot story was being discussed beside the fountain.

There had been a longer expedition than usual planned for the next day: they had intended to visit a cave among the mountains, and now the party was weighing the advisability of maintaining or relinquishing the idea.

The Bohemian, being consulted as to the authenticity of the robber, calmly raised his shoulders. The girl was a Roumanian, he remarked, and therefore, of course, more inclined to falsehood than to truth. The account she gave was confused; superstitious terrors had bewildered her faculties. At the first appearance of the man, she had naturally jumped to the conclusion that this was the wicked spirit Miasanoptie, under whose evil bane falls every Roumanian who is foolish enough to stand at the crossing of two roads while the sun is setting. "And," added the Bohemian, with scornful pity, "the stupid girl maintains that it is the Tuesday which has brought her bad luck; – for would you believe it? – these people here call the Tuesday a bad day: they will neither begin nor finish anything on a Tuesday."

"But have you not got something of that sort in Bohemia too?" Gretchen ventured to suggest.

"Why, Friday is our unlucky day," said the Bohemian, with wondering simplicity; "it is only such ignorant people as these who could make Tuesday the bad day."

"Why, then Bohemians can be superstitious too?"

The Bohemian's blue eyes were fixed upon her with a sort of sorrowful reproach.

"That is not a superstition, Fräulein; that is a belief."

"Well; but to return to the robbers," said Gretchen, unwilling to waste time upon such a nice definition as Bohemian versus Rou-