Explore "Legends From River and Mountain" by Carmen Sylva on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Old Lisbeth sat by the fire and spun, but on the opposite side of the / hearth her son Dietrich crouched idle, his cheek upon his hand, gazing / into the embers. For many weeks he had been growing more and more / silent and listless, and no one could tell what ailed him. Was it that / Johanna, the maiden he was courting, had been cruel to him, or was / something wrong with his work? His old mother looked across at him and / wondered. Outside the wind was blowing, and brought plainly to their / ears the sound of the river as it rushed through the valley towards the / lake of Pöhlde, that the Hartz-folk call the Tumpensee. Now and then / the blast rose to so shrill a pitch that you might have thought a voice / was calling from afar; and when this happened, Dietrich would start / from his seat and make as though he would rush from the house, but each / time he checked himself, and sank with a shiver upon the bench again. / At last Lisbeth could bear it no longer.
"What ails thee, son? " she cried. "Art thou bewitched, that a mere gust / of wind can set thee all a-tremble?"