Suddenly all around was hushed. The wanderers rose slowly and timidly, and looked after Hackelnberg; but he had vanished, and did not return.
"But who is the Tut-Osel?" inquired the second wanderer, after a long pause.
"In a distant nunnery in Thuringia," replied the first, "there once lived a nun named Ursula, who, even during her lifetime, tormented all the sisterhood by her discordant voice, and oftentimes interrupted the service of the church, for which reason they called her Tut-Osel, or Tooting Ursula. If matters were bad while she lived, they became far worse when she died. At eleven o'clock every night she now thrust her head through a hole in the convent tower and tooted most miserably, and every morning at about four o'clock she joined unasked in the matin song.
"For a few days the sisterhood endured this with a beating heart, and on bended knees; but on the fourth morning, when she joined in the service, and one of the nuns whispered tremblingly to her neighbour--
"'Ha! it is surely our Tut-Osel!' the song ceased, the hair of the nuns stood on end, and they all rushed from the church, exclaiming--
"Despite the penances and chastisements with which they were threatened, not one of the nuns would enter the church again until the Tut-Osel was banished from the walls of the nunnery. To effect this, one of the most celebrated exorcists of the day, a Capuchin friar, from a cloister on the banks of the Danube, was sent for; and he succeeded, by prayer and fasting, in banishing Ursel in the shape of a screech-owl to the far-distant Dummburg.
"Here she met Hackelnberg, the Wild Huntsman, and found in his wood-cry, 'Hu! hu!' as great delight as he did in her 'U! hu!' So they now always hunt together; he glad to have a spirit after his own kind, and she rejoiced in the extreme to be no longer compelled to reside within the walls of a cloister, and there listen to the echo of her own song."
"So much for the Tut-Osel. Now tell us how it fared with the shepherd who spoke to Hackelnberg."
"Listen to the marvellous adventure," said the third wanderer. "A shepherd once hearing the Wild Huntsman journeying through the forest, encouraged the spirit hounds, and called out--
"Hackelnberg instantly turned round and roared out to him, in a voice like thunder--