only just time to rescue
ourselves and the children. I was the last to leave the house which we
were never to see again. I could not decide which of my possessions to
take with me, so I seized up the skin of a puma that I had shot on
another memorable occasion, and bore it off on my shoulder, like Jason
carrying the golden fleece, and that was all that was left of my
personal property. Ah! it needs patience to conquer the elements," he
said.

Altogether the Herr Baron was a wonderful character; he seemed as if he
were not real, but had stepped out of a book of romance. He delighted in
reading English stories; he was especially fond of "She" and "King
Solomon's Mines." The children believed that he smoked day and night;
for they had never seen him without a cigarette, except at meal-times.

He told father and mother the story of how he had had a bullet
extracted from his side that he had carried about with him for years. It
had struck him during one of the revolutions that so frequently go on in
South America. The bullet had recently set up inflammation, and a
dangerous operation was necessary to remove it. "Chloroform! not if I
know it," he said to the doctors. "Just you let me smoke my cigar, and I
shall be all right. I won't say 'Oh!'"

The doctors were naturally very astonished and demurred at this new
method of treatment; but he persisted in his determination, and the
cigar never left his mouth till the painful business was successfully
over!

The Herr Baron was a mysterious person; why he lived for months
together in that lonely spot, no one knew. True, he was fond of hunting,
and went out at nights with the landlord to hunt the stag.

There were hunting-boxes made of logs of wood, with steps that led up
into them, placed in different positions in the woods near the inn.

The children loved to climb up into them. A hunting-box made such a nice
airy room, they said; but mother was glad when they were down again
without broken limbs.

Mother was surprised when she entered the inn-parlour to find the Herr
Baron engaged in a game of quartette with Trudel and Lottchen and
Fritz. Indeed he was so sociable and kind and fond of children that she
thought it was a pity that he had none of his own.

On the pond near the house were two most remarkable-looking boats. These
Hermann and Fritz had made themselves with the aid, I believe, of the
Herr Baron. They had a long stick and punted about in them on the water,
and