ked myself into a rage--a
foolish thing to do with the thermometer at 96 deg. in the shade; but H----
was provokingly calm, which irritated me still more. There is an old
French verse which, rendered into English, says--

"Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived;
But what torments of pain you endured
From evils that never arrived!"

Now, a little patience would have saved me a useless ebullition of
temper. While I was still at white-heat up came the head official;
removing the cigar from his lips with Oriental dignity and deliberation,
he calmly answered my question, and having paid the money we went our
way.

Our design was now to get to Weisskirchen, and sleep there, that place
being the only decent quarters within reach. Our road was over the
mountains--a lonely pass of ill repute. Several persons had been stopped
and robbed in these parts quite recently. The Government had formerly a
small guardhouse at the top of the pass; but it has been deserted since
1867, when the district ceased to be maintained as the Military
Frontier. Since that time crime has been very much on the increase all
along the border-country. The lawlessness that is rampant at the
extremities of the kingdom shows a weakness in the Central Government
which is very reprehensible. But for this laxity on the borders, the
recent Szeckler conspiracy for making a raid on the Russian railway
could never have been projected.

We arrived all right at Weisskirchen, which was good-luck considering
the chances of an upset in the darkness, for night had overtaken us long
before our drive was half over. Thoroughly tired, we were glad enough to
draw up in the innyard, the same I had visited some weeks before; but
great was our disgust at being told that there was not a bed to be
had--every room was taken. We drove on to inn No. 2, where they had beds
but no supper. We were nearly starving, for we had had nothing to eat
since the morning, so back we had to go to No. 1 to procure supper. When
this important meal was finished, we had to make the return journey once
more. The streets were perfectly dark, and it was an affair of no small
difficulty to find our way. It happened to me that I stepped into
something soft and bumpy. I could not conceive what it was. I made a
long step forward, thinking to clear the obstacle, but I only stumbled
into another soft and bumpy thing. Was it a flock of sheep lying pa