he carries his head under his arm, and waves
it politely, as men wave their hats, to passers
by. Formerly he used to wear it on his
shoulders, and take it off when he bowed on
meeting any one, so that it spoke its
"Bonjour"—for it always used French greetings
—while it was being flourished in the air.
A certain chaplain damaged the doctor's
head somewhat in bowling at it when it was
set up with others for a game at nine-pins.
The same chaplain afterwards decamped in a
hurry with a piece of the doctor's property;
and when the robbed spirit snatched up his
head to follow, he put it on so badly that it
suffered further damage. It fitted indeed
ever afterwards so loosely that it fell
forwards, and hung down over his breast.
Annoyed at this, and not willing to be taken
for a meditative man, the Doctor at last
altogether left off wearing his head on his
shoulders, and has for a long time past
carried it about under his arm. Doctor Horn
has one leg, and wears on the foot of that a
large, loose yellow slipper. Instead of the
other leg, there is attached to him a brightly-painted
adder, which is his wife, and which,
after coiling three times as a garter round
the neighbouring thigh, streams out behind,
twisting its head this way and that, and
hissing. Dr. Horn carries in one hand a
stick with a skull for its top, in the mouth of
which is stuck always a lighted cigar.

The chaplain who has been mentioned, and
whose story is attached to a spring called the
Priest's Fountain, near Zittau, was a young
man vowed to the Virgin before birth. His
sense of fun appeared so strong in him as a
baby, that his mother was in anguish lest he
should grow up so fond of life as to refuse
being made into a mummy by the monks, and
prayed for help. One day, while she was so
distressed, the casement opened of itself, and
a silver mist, that had risen from a neighbouring
spring, floating into the room, took
the form of a beautiful and slender woman,
with mild blue eyes and a heavenly
expression. She gave to the poor mother a
little keepsake, by the use of which her son,
if tempted when he had taken priest's orders,
might save himself. It was a small book that
seemed to be of no weight, though bound in
stone—the kind of stone on which you see the
images of many shrubs and trees. It was
clasped with two silver threads, fixed crosswise,
that no force could break.

The child grew to be a lusty, jolly youth,
who met Dr. Horn one sunny day among the
rocks, and was so bold and innocent as to talk
freely and jest with him. The doctor said it
was a shame that one so able to enjoy life
should become a monk. The youth replied that
so it was settled, and that so it must be in
God's name; whereupon the doctor sped
away on his one leg, and in a minute was
upon the other side of a high mountain.

The mother died. The youth received the
spirit's keepsake, and in due time was
ordained a parish priest. Soon afterwards, the
feelings natural to man tormented him. He
as on the point of consulting Dr. Horn,
whom he was not afraid to face, priest as he
was, if he took with him his scapular and
consecrated crucifix. While looking for the
scapular, the little book with the stone cover
came into his head and changed the current
of his thoughts. The trees upon the stone
appeared to shift and change: they resembled
presently a water plant called naiad's hair,
that floated into a border round the little
book and formed words—a rhyme—by which
he was told that a drop from that fountain,
now called Priest's Fountain, falling at full
moon on the silver threads would loosen
them. The young priest waited for full-moon,
and tried the spell. The threads
became a silver crown and floated on the water;
the book opened, and was found to contain a
water-lily. The end was the appearance of
the blue-eyed nymph of the fountain; an
angelic spirit who became the Priest's Egeria,
and with whom under every full moon, he
held converse that satisfied his heart.

One night, having become too confident, the
priest set out to call his nymph when there
was no full moon, and even such moon as
there was the clouds were covering. He met
Dr. Horn upon the road, but would not
answer him—and, indeed, ran away from him.
He met Dr. Horn again at the fountain. The
spell failed. The doctor taunted and tempted.
The chaplain became desperate, and being
resolved to try his charm again at
midnight, was enticed to pass the time until
that hour over a game of cards. Dr. Horn
and the chaplain sat down by a block of
stone. The doctor pulled the ten black nails
off his own fingers, and as he laid them down
upon the rock they became cards. On each was
written one of the commandments. (Does
any legend of this nature lurk behind our
vulgar styling of an angry woman's fingernails
her ten commandments?) The doctor
shook a pair of dice out of the two eyes of
his skull. The game he proposed to play—an
easy one—was called, he said, Soul's Hazard,
and the cards to be won or lost were the
commandments. The rest of the legend tolls
of the conflict between Dr. Horn and the
pure spirit of the fountain. The chaplain
sinned, and suffered. Like Faust
behind Mephistopheles, he rode on a black
horse behind Dr. Horn with the doctor's
fiery mantle sweeping over him; played
ghastly games for the stake of his heart and
his love with the doctor and a crew of
ghosts, all in grey mantles; enclosed a demon
adder in his keepsake-book, and killed his
nymph unwittingly; rushed to her from the
clutches of Dr. Horn, to see her lying in the
bed of the spring, dead, and mourned by silent
water-nymphs; was protected by the nymphs
against the fury of the doctor and his civw
of devils; leaped down to his beloved; and
was found dead in the brook next morning.