Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/118

 has he? So whafs the use of all this howling in the village! Don’t you agree with me yourself, Boy?”

What all do not people say! Old Markus breaks his head thinking over things he knows nothing about, is what they say.

Just then a shepherd from the Riegelberg jumped into the door. He was so excited he could hardly speak. He pointed through the window with both forefingers, toward the crest of the Filnbaum Forest. The old servant followed the direction and clasped his hands in fear. There, behind the summit, whirled upward a circling column of red smoke, which spread out and blackened the sky.

“That may be very serious,” declared Markus. He seized an axe and hurried away. The smoke rose thicker and thicker, and spread out faster and faster. I began to cry. Old Markus paid no attention to me; he had other work to do.

On the sunny slopes of the Filnbaum Forest it had begun, where there was a space overgrown with withered briars and bushes. Near the growth of dry larch trees the fire began, no one knows how. First it skipped along lightly from twig to twig, then upward from great bough to bough, with wide fluttering wings. Soon the conflagration unchained its wild powers, and set floating its red, victorious banners. Here the forest becomes thicker and loftier; long braids of moss swing from the branches, and the great trees which were wounded by a hail storm some years ago, are bare and resinous to the summit. With what relish the fiery tongues lick these great trunks, and then flare