Page:Libussa, Duchess of Bohemia; also, The Man Without a Name.djvu/22

6 fell it. The faint-hearted Elf sighed as the voracious saw with its teeth of steel began to nibble at the foundation of her dwelling. Anxiously she looked round from the top of her tree for her faithful champion; still her quick-sightedness could nowhere discover him, and the consternation which had seized upon her made the power of foresight which she possessed so ineffective that she was as little able to decipher her impending fate as the sons of Æsculapius, with their famous prognosis, are able to advise themselves when death knocks at their own door.

Krokus, however, was approaching, and already so near the scene of this sad catastrophe, that the noise of the grating saw resounded in his ears. This din in the forest did not seem to him of good omen; he accelerated his pace, and a single glance rendered him sensible of the impending destruction of the tree confided to his protection. Like a frantic madman, he attacked the woodcutters with lance and drawn sword, and drove them from their work. They beheld in him a mountain-goblin, and fled in the greatest consternation. Fortunately the wound which the tree had received was yet easy to be cured, and the scar disappeared in a few summers.