companion go before, handling my stick at
the same time as one ready to strike instantly
if any injury were offered. I was just
demonstrative enough to frighten my companion.
We were a mere couple of rabbits. Each of
us in his innocence feared that the other
might be a guilty monster, and so we were
both glad enough to get out of the hollow.
On the other side of the glen the road widened,
and my companion paused at the head of a
little path that led down to a deeper corner
of the hollow, and across the fields. That
was his way home. He had but a mile to go,
and was already anticipating all the kisses of
his household. He wished me a prosperous
journey; I wished him a happy welcome in
his village; and we shook hands like two
young men who owed amends to one another.

He had told me before we parted that there
were two houses of entertainment not far in
advance. Already I saw the red-tiled roof of
one, that looked like a respectable farm-house.
From the door of that house, however, I was
turned away; and as the darkness of the
evening was changing into night, I ran as fast
as I was able to the next place of shelter.
By the pump, the horse-trough, and the dirty
pool I knew that there was entertainment
there for man and horse. I therefore raised
the wooden latch, and in a modest tone made
my request for a bed. A vixenish landlady
from the midst of a group of screaming
children cried to me, "You can't have a bed,
you can have straw," That would do quite
as well, I said.

I sat down at a table in a corner of the
large room, called for a glass of beer,
produced some bread and sausage that I had
brought with me from Hamburgh, and made
a comfortable supper. There was a large
wood fire blazing on the ample hearth, but
the landlord and his family engrossed its
whole vicinity. The house contained no
other sitting-room and no other sleeping
accommodation than the one family bedroom
and the barn.

While I was at supper there came in other
wandering boys like myself. I had escaped
the rain, but they had not; they came in
dripping: a stout man, and a tall, lank stripling.
The youth wore a white blouse and
hat covered with oil-skin, his trousers were
tucked halfway up his legs, and he had mud
up to his ankles. He soon exchanged our
scraps of information about one another.
The stout man was a baker from Lübeck on
the way to Hamburgh; the stripling, probably
not yet out of his teens, was part
brazier, part coppersmith, part tinman. He
had been three weeks on his travels, and had
come, like myself, from Hamburgh since
morning. He was very poor. He did not
tell us that; but he ordered nothing to eat
or drink, and except the draught of comfort
that he got out of my bottle, the poor fellow
went supperless to bed. Not altogether
supperless, because he had some smoke; we
made a snug little party in the corner, and
talked, smoked, and comforted ourselves, after
the children had been put to bed, and while
the landlord, landlady, and an old
grandfather told stories to each other in low
German by the fire. At nine o'clock the
landlord lighted his lanthorn, and told us
bluffly that we might go to bed. We, therefore,
having handed him our papers, passports,
and wander-books, for his security and for
our own, followed into the barn. That was a
place large enough to hold straw for a regiment
of soldiers. It was a continuation of
the dwelling-house, sheltered under the same
roof. We mounted three rude ladders, and
so got from floor to floor into the loft. Having
guided us safely thither, there he quitted us
at once with a good night, taking his lanthorn
with him, and leaving us to make our beds in
the thick darkness as we could. The straw
was not straw: it was short-cut hay, old
enough to have lost all scent of hay, and to
have acquired some other scents less pleasing
to the nose; hay trodden, pressed, and
matted down, without a vestige in it of its
ancient elasticity. There was nothing in it
to remind us of a summer tumble on the
haycock. The barn roof was open, and the
March night wind whistled over us, but I
took off my boots to ease my swollen feet,
took my coat off that I might spread it over
my chest as a counterpane, and struggled in
vain to work a hole for my feet into the hard
knotted bank of hay. So I spent the night,
just so much not asleep, that I was always
conscious, dimly, of the snoring of the baker,
and awoke sometimes to wonder what the
landlord's cock had supped upon, for it was
continually crowing in its sleep, on the barn-
floor below. When morning broke we rose
and had a brisk wash at the pump, scraped
the mud from our boots, and breakfasted.
The baker and I had plain dry bread and hot
coffee. The tinman breakfasted on milk.
He said it was better—poor fellow! he knew
it was cheaper. By seven o'clock we were
all afoot again, the baker journeying to
Hamburgh, the tinman and I road-companions to
Lübeck.

At noon, after a five hours' walk, a pleasant
roadside inn with a deep gable roof and snug
curtains behind its lattice windows, tempted
me to rest and dine. "We shall get a good
dinner here," I said, "let us go in." The
tinman would hear of no such thing. "We
must get on to Lübeck," he replied. "Two
more hours of steady walking and we shall
be there." Poor youth. At Lübeck he could
demand a dinner at his herberge, and he had
no chance of any other. So we trudged on
till the tall turrets and steeples of Lübeck
rose on the horizon. The tinman desired to
know what my intentions were. Was I going
straight on to Berlin without working?
Should I seek work at Lübeck? If not, of
course I would take the viaticum. "I thought
not," I told him. "Ah, then," he said, "you