as 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
Hamburg, 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. We soon exchanged our scraps of information
about one another. The stout man was a baker from Lubeck on the way to
Hamburg; the stripling, probably not yet out of his teens, was part
brazier, part coppersmith, part tinman; had been three weeks on his
travels, and had come, like myself, from Hamburg 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
though, for 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 lantern, 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 g