Just as one does not hear one’s own voice for the thundering of the waters, so Christine was not capable of knowing her own thoughts in the uproar that was thundering through her mind. Instinctively she fled up to the hill, and ever more fiercely did she feel a burning on her cheek where the green huntsman’s mouth had touched her; she rubbed and washed, but the burning did not decrease.

The night became wild. Up in the air and in the ravines there was a fierce uproar as if the spirits of the night wee holding a marriage feast in the black clouds and the winds were playing wild music for their horrible dances, as if the flashes of lightning were the wedding torches and the thunder the nuptial blessing. No one had ever previously experienced such a night at this time of year.

In the dark valley there was movement around one large house, and many people pressed around its sheltering roof. During a storm it usually happens that fear for his own hearth and home will drive the countryman under his own roof, where he can watch anxiously as long as the thunderstorm is in the sky above, guarding and protecting his own house. But now the common tribulation was greater than fear of the storm. The affliction brought them together in this house, which those whom the storm was driving from the Münneberg had to pass by as well as those who had taken flight from Bärhegen. Forgetting the terror of the night because of their own misery, they could be heard complaining and grumbling about their misfortune. In addition to all their misfortunes there had now come the violence of nature. Horses and oxen had become frightened and benumbed, had wrecked the carts, had hurled themselves over precipices, and many a creature groaned in deep pain from serious injuries, while others cried out loud as their shattered limbs reset and bound up.

Those who had seen the green huntsman also took flight in their terrible fear and joined in the misery of the others; here they told tremblingly of the repeated appearance of the figure. Trembling, the crowd listened to what the men told, pressed forward from the wide, dark space nearer to the fire around which the men were seated, and when the wind blew through the rafters or the thunder rolled over the house-top the crowd cried out and thought that the green huntsman was breaking through the roof to show himself in their midst. But when he did not come, when the terror of him subsided, when the old misery remained and the lamentations of the sufferers became louder, there gradually rose up those thoughts which are so prone to threaten a man’s soul when he is in trouble. They began to calculate how much more worth they all were than one single unbaptized child; they increasingly forgot that guilt with regard to one soul weighs a thousand times more heavily than the rescuing of thousands upon thousands of human lives.

Gradually these thoughts made themselves heard and began to be mingled as comprehensible words into the groans of pain of the sufferers. People asked more closely about the green huntsman, grumbling that the others had not stood up to him better; he would not have taken anyone off, and the less you feared him, the less he would do to people. They might perhaps have been able to help the whole valley, if they had had their hearts in the right place. Then the men began to excuse themselves. They did not say that dealing with the devil was no joke and that if you lent him an ear you would soon have to give him your whole head; but they spoke of the green huntsman’s terrible appearance, his flaming beard, the fiery feather on his hat like a castle-tower, and the terrible smell of sulfur which they had not cared to put up with. Christine’s husband, however, who was used to his words becoming effective only after they had been confirmed by his wife, said that they should only ask his wife, she could tell them whether anybody could stand up to it; for everybody knew that she was a fearless woman. Then they all looked round for Christine, but nobody saw her. Each one had thought only of saving himself and no one else, and as each of them was now sitting where it was dry, he thought that all the others were too. Only now did it occur to them all that they had not seen Christine again since that terrible moment, and that she had not come into the house. Then her husband began to lament and all the others lamented with him, for it seemed to them all as if only Christine knew how to help. Suddenly the door opened, and Christine stood in their midst; her hair was dripping wet and her cheeks were red, while her eyes were burning more darkly than usual with a sinister fire. She was received with a sympathy to which she was not accustomed, and everybody wanted to tell her what had been thought and expressed and how much they had worried about her. Christine soon saw what this all meant and, hiding her inner fire behind mocking words, she reproached the men for their overhasty flight and for the way none of them had taken any trouble about a poor woman and nobody had looked round to see what the green huntsman was up to with her. Then the storm of curiosity broke out, and everybody wanted first to know what the green huntsman had been doing with her, and those who were at the back stood up as high as they could in order to hear better and to see more closely the woman who had stood so near to the green huntsman. She wasn’t to say anything, Christine said at first; they hadn’t deserved it of her, they had treated her badly in the valley because she was a foreigner, the women had given her a bad name, the men had left her in the lurch everywhere, and if she bad not been better intentioned than them all and if she had not had more courage than the lot of them, there would be no consolation nor way out for them at this very moment. Christine went on talking a long time in this way, reproaching the womenfolk harshly, who had never been willing to believe her that Lake Constance was bigger than the castle pond, and the more she was pressed, the more obstinate she seemed to become, and she insisted that people would put a wrong interpretation on what she had to say, and if all went well, would give her no thanks on that account; but if anything went wrong, it would be her fault and the entire responsibility would be placed upon her shoulders.

When finally the whole gathering was before Christine, begging and imploring her almost on their knees, and when those who were injured cried out loud and persisted in so doing, Christine seemed to relent and began to tell how she had stood firm and come to an agreement with the green huntsman; but she said nothing about the kiss, nor about the way it had burned on her cheek and how her mind had been overwhelmed with the roaring noise. But she related what she had been considering since then in her downcast mind. The most important thing, she said, was that the beech-trees would be taken up to Bärhegen; once they were up there, you could still see what could be done, and the main thing was that up till then as far as she knew no child would be born among them.

Many felt cold shivers down their spines at this account, but they were all pleased to think that they would still be able to see what could be done.

One young woman alone wept so bitterly that you could have washed your hands under her eyes, but she did not say anything.