Then the knight’s head seemed to become more and more puffed out with anger, and his voice exploded like a thunderclap amid steep rocks, and he told them that if he were lenient, they were indolent. If someone in Poland was allowed to keep his bare life, he would kiss your feet with gratitude, but here they had children and cattle, a roof over their heads and cupboards to put their things in, and still they were not satisfied. ‘But I will make you more obedient and more contented, as sure as I am Hans von Stoffeln, and if the hundred beech-trees are not planted up there within a month, I’ll have you whipped until there’s not a finger’s length of your skin left whole, and I’ll set the dogs on your women and children.’

Then nobody dared to remonstrate further, but neither did any one want any of the food and drink; after the angry order had been given, they pressed out to the door, and everyone of them would gladly have been the first to leave, and for a long time after they had gone they were followed by the knight’s voice of thunder and the laughter of the other knights, the jeering of the servants and the howling of the hounds.

When they came to a turn in the road, where they could no longer be seen from the castle, they sat down by the roadside and wept bitterly; no one had any consolation for his neighbor, and none of them had the courage for real anger, for privation and torments had extinguished their courage, so that they had no more strength left for anger, only enough for despair. They were to transport beech trees, complete with roots and branches, for a three hours’ journey over rough tracks up the steep Münneberg, while close by this hill many fine beeches were growing, but these had to be left standing! Within a month the work had to be finished; they were to drag three trees each of the first two days and four trees every third day, and the hill was steep and their cattle already exhausted. And in addition to all this it was May, the month when the peasant has to work hard in his fields and may hardly leave them by day or night, if he wants to have bread and food for the winter.

While they were waiting there so disconsolately, none daring to look into the other’s face to see his misery because his own distress already overwhelmed him, and none daring to take the bad news home to his wife and family, there suddenly appeared in front of them, they did not know where he had come from, the tall, lean figure of a green huntsman. A red feather was swaying on his bold -looking cap, a little red beard blazed in his dark face, and a mouth opened between his hooked nose and pointed chin, almost invisible like a cavern beneath overhanging rocks, and uttered the question: ‘What’s the matter, good people, that u are sitting and moaning like this, as if to force the rocks out of the earth and the branches down from the trees?’ Twice he asked thus, and twice he received no answer.

Then the green huntsman’s dark face became even darker and his little red beard became even redder, so that it seemed to be crackling and sparkling like pine wood on fire; his mouth pursed itself sharply like an arrow and then opened to ask quite pleasingly and gently: ‘But good people, what use is it your sitting and moaning there? You could go on howling like that till a second Flood comes or till your shrieking brings down the stars from the sky, but that’s not likely to help you very much. But when somebody asks you what’s wrong, somebody who means well by you and could possibly help you, you ought to answer and say something sensible instead of crying out loud; that might be more use to you.’ At that an old man shook his white head of hair and replied, ‘Don’t take it amiss, but no huntsman can take away the cause of our weeping, and once the heart is swollen with grief it can find words no longer.’

Then the green huntsman shook his sharp head and said, ‘Father, what you say is not stupid, but that’s not the way things are. You can strike anything you please, a rock or a tree, and it will utter a sound, it will lament. A man too should lament, should lament about everything, should complain to the first person he meets, for perhaps this person can help him. I am only a huntsman, but who knows whether I haven’t got an efficient team of cattle at home to transport wood and stones or beech-trees and pines?’

When the poor peasants heard the word ‘team,’ it went straight to their hearts and there became a spark of hope; all eyes turned towards the huntsman, and the old man opened his mouth once more; he said it was not always right to tell the first person you met what was on your mind; but since they could tell from his words that he meant well and that he might perhaps help, they wouldn’t hide anything from him. They had suffered now for more than two years from the building of the new castle, and there was not a single household in the whole community which was not in bitter distress. Now they had taken fresh breath, thinking that they would at last have their hands free for their own work, the administration had just given them the order to plant within one month by the new castle a new avenue of beech-trees taken from the Münneberg. They did not know how they could accomplish this in the time with their exhausted cattle; and if they did accomplish the task, what use would it be to them? They would not then be able to plant and to sow their own fields and would have to die of starvation later, even if the hard work for the knight had not killed them before that. They were reluctant to take this news to their homes, for they did not want to pour new grief on to old misery.

Then the green huntsman made a sympathetic face, lifted up his long, thin, black hand threateningly against the castle and swore deep vengeance for such tyranny. But he would help the peasants, he said. His equipment was like none other in the country, and as many trees as they could bring to Kilchstalden (‘church slope’), on this side of Sumiswald, he would transport from there to Bärhegen, as a favor to them and to spite the knights and for very little payment.

The poor men pricked up their ears on hearing this unexpected offer. If they could only make an agreement about the payment, they were saved, for they could bring the beech-trees to Kilchstalden without neglecting their farm work on account of this task and consequently without being utterly ruined. The old man therefore said, ‘Well, tell us what you require, so that we can make an agreement!’ Then the green huntsman showed a cunning face; his little beard crackled, and his eyes gleamed at them like snakes’ eyes, and a hideous laugh came from the two comers of his mouth as be opened his lips and spoke, ‘As I was saying, I don’t ask for much, nothing more than an unbaptized child.’

The word flashed at the men like lightning, scales fell from their eyes, and like spray in a whirlwind they scattered in different directions.

Then the green huntsman laughed out loud, so that the fish in the stream hid themselves and the birds sought cover in the thicket, and the feather swayed horribly on his hat while his little beard went up and down.

‘Think it over, or see what your womenfolk have got to say about it; you’ll find me here again in three nights’ time!’ He called after the men in flight in a sharp, resounding voice, so that the words remained fixed in their ears as arrows with barbed hooks stay stuck in flesh.

Pale and trembling in mind as in all their limbs, the men rushed home; none looked round at one of the others, not one would have turned his head round, not for everything in the world. When the men came rushing along in this scared way, like doves that have been chased by a hawk into their dovecote, they brought terror with them into all the houses, and everybody trembled fearfully to hear what news it was that had made the men stumble and hasten in such confusion.

Quivering with curiosity the womenfolk crept after the men until they had them in some quiet place where confidences could be exchanged undisturbed. There each man had to tell his wife what had been heard in the castle, and the women received the news with curses and fury; the men had to relate whom they had met and what he had proposed to them. Then nameless fear seized hold of the women, a cry of pain resounded over hills and valley, and each woman felt as if it were her own child that the ruthless huntsman had demanded. Only one woman did not cry out like the rest. This was a terribly forceful woman, who was said to have come from Lindau and who lived here on this very farm. She had wild, black eyes and had little fear of God or man. She had already been angry with the men for not refusing the knight’s demands there and then; if she had been there, she’d have told him straight, she said. When she heard about the green huntsman and his offer and how the men had rushed away, she really did become angry and reviled the men for their cowardice; if they had looked the green huntsman more boldly in the face, he might perhaps have contented himself with some other payment, and as the work was to be for the castle, it would do their souls no harm if the devil undertook it for them. She was enraged at heart because she had not been there, even if only that she could have seen the devil himself and known what he looked like. That is why this woman did not weep, but in her fury uttered hard words against her own husband and against all the other men.

On the following day, when the cry of dismay had subsided into a quiet whimpering, the men sat together, looking for wise counsel, but finding none. At first there was talk of making a fresh request to the knight, but nobody was willing to go to make a petition, for nobody wanted to risk life and limb. One man suggested sending the women and children with their crying and moaning, but he soon became silent when the women themselves began to talk; for already in those days women were not far away when the menfolk took counsel together.