An old landed proprietor from the mining town of X., who owned a small strip of forest in those parts and was at the same time an enthusiastic huntsman, had taken advantage of this popular superstition to buy this little house, for a mere song.

He used it as a hunting box.

He could not afford to keep a huntsman of his own to look after it and knowing that if he locked it up, thieves would most probably break into it and steal everything, he left the doors wide open and everyone instantly avoided it as uncanny.

The reason Henrietta never met him was that this old gentleman was a government official, who had to live most of his time in the town of Klausenburg, but whenever he was not hunting here he was out in the forests all night till dawn when he turned into the little house for a nap and was off again before the afternoon; and so Henrietta who regularly visited the hut in the afternoon, naturally never encountered him.
Leonard even named the old gentleman's name and then Henrietta remembered meeting him at the _soirees_ at Klausenburg.

Leonard, however, warned his wife never to mention the matter in the presence of the old gentleman in question, if she should ever meet him, for he had sundry relations with poachers and other people of that sort.