night.
But I thought this would not be allowable, and, armed with an umbrella,
I set off along the road, with which I was perfectly familiar.

But the storm soon burst, and it grew so dark that, except when the
lightning flashed, I could not see my hand before my face. Yet on I
went, though wondering that the path along which I groped my way led
upward, until the lightning showed me that, by mistake, I had taken the
road to Greifenstein. I turned back, and while feeling my way through
the gloom the earth seemed to vanish under my feet, and I plunged
headlong into a viewless gulf--not through empty space, however, but a
wet, tangled mass which beat against my face, until at last there was a
jerk which shook me from head to foot.

I no longer fell, but I heard above me the sound of something tearing,
and the thought darted through my mind that I was hanging by
my trousers. Groping around, I found vine-leaves, branches, and
lattice-work, to which I clung, and tearing away with my foot the cloth
which had caught on the end of a lath, I again brought my head where
it should be, and discovered that I was hanging on a vine-clad wall. A
flash of lightning showed me the ground not very far below and, by the
help of the espalier and the vines I at last stood in a garden.

Almost by a miracle I escaped with a few scratches; but when I
afterwards went to look at the scene of this disaster cold chills ran
down my back, for half the distance whence I plunged into the garden
would have been enough to break my neck.

Our games were similar to those which lads of the same age play now, but
there were some additional ones that could only take place in a wooded
mountain valley like Keilhau; such, for instance, were our Indian
games, which engrossed us at the time when we were pleased with Cooper's
"Leather-Stocking," but I need not describe them.

When I was one of the older pupils a party of us surprised some
"Panzen"--as we called the younger ones--one hot afternoon engaged in
a very singular game of their own invention. They had undressed to the
skin in the midst of the thickest woods and were performing Paradise
and the Fall of Man, as they had probably just been taught in their
religious lesson. For the expulsion of Adam and our universal mother
Eve, the angel--in this case there were two of them--used, instead of
the flaming sword, stout hazel rods, with which they performed their
part of warders so overzealously that a quarrel