out from my hiding-place, climbed on to the
waggon, and crept into one of the empty casks.

It had a bottom but no top, and it lay upon its side with the open end
inward. There I crouched like a dog in its kennel, my knees drawn up to
my chin, for the barrels were not very large and I am a well-grown man.
As I lay there, out came the three peasants again, and presently I heard
a crash upon the top of me which told that I had another barrel above
me. They piled them upon the cart until I could not imagine how I was
ever to get out again. However, it is time to think of crossing the
Vistula when you are over the Rhine, and I had no doubt that if chance
and my own wits had carried me so far they would carry me farther.

Soon, when the waggon was full, they set forth upon their way, and I
within my barrel chuckled at every step, for it was carrying me whither
I wished to go. We travelled slowly, and the peasants walked beside the
waggons.

This I knew, because I heard their voices close to me. They seemed to me
to be very merry fellows, for they laughed heartily as they went. What
the joke was I could not understand. Though I speak their language
fairly well I could not hear anything comic in the scraps of their
conversation which met my ear.

I reckoned that at the rate of walking of a team of oxen we covered
about two miles an hour. Therefore, when I was sure that two and a
half hours had passed--such hours, my friends, cramped, suffocated, and
nearly poisoned with the fumes of the lees--when they had passed, I was
sure that the dangerous open country was behind us, and that we were
upon the edge of the forest and the mountain. So now I had to turn my
mind upon how I was to get out of my barrel. I had thought of several
ways, and was balancing one against the other when the question was
decided for me in a very simple but unexpected manner.

The waggon stopped suddenly with a jerk, and I heard a number of gruff
voices in excited talk. "Where, where?" cried one. "On our cart," said
another. "Who is he?" said a third. "A French officer; I saw his cap
and his boots." They all roared with laughter. "I was looking out of the
window of the posada and I saw him spring into the cask like a toreador
with a Seville bull at his heels." "Which cask, then?" "It was this
one," said the fellow, and sure enough his fist struck the wood beside
my head.

What a situation, my friends, for a man of my standing!

I blush now, after fo