Page:Popular Tales of the Germans (Volume 2).djvu/136

 oon as the potilion on the eat wind caught a glance of him, he jumped for joy that his prey was now in his hands, and prepared to trike a materly blow. The panting Stephen had nearly climbed the hill; the lat acent only remained, and then he had down hill all the way home; he therefore mutered up his trength to make the lat effort; but the hill was teep, and the burden heavy. Accordingly he was forced to ret oftener than once before he gained the top, propping the crate each time upon his knotty crab-tick, in order to eae its oppreive weight, and wiping away the big drops of weat that broke out from his forehead. By an exertion of his lat remaining vigour he reached the ummit, and now a mooth even path led to the decent. In the middle of the way there lay a fir-tree that had been lately awed, cloe by the path, part of the bole tood upright as an arrow, and level at the top as a table. Round it there grew a luxuriant bed of dark-green gras. The reting-