ngered at the window listening to
this, I saw Mrs. Harvey-Browne emerge from the inn door in her Sunday
toque, and, crossing the market-place followed by Brosy, go into the
church. In an instant I had whisked into my hat, and hurrying downstairs
to the Professor who was strolling up and down a rose-bordered path in
the garden at the back of the house, informed him breathlessly that the
Harvey-Brownes might now be looked upon as circumvented.

'What, already? Thou art truly a wonderful ally!' he exclaimed in great
glee.

'Oh _that's_ nothing,' I replied modestly; as indeed it was.

'Let us start at once then,' he cried briskly; and we accordingly
started, slipping out of the house and round the corner down to the
quay.

The sun was shining, the ground was drying, there was a slight breeze
from the east which ought, the landlord said, to blow us gently to
Hiddensee if it kept up in about four hours. All my arrangements had
been made the night before with the aid of August and Gertrud, and the
brig _Bertha_, quite an imposing-looking craft that plied on week-days,
weather permitting, between Wiek and Stralsund, had been hired for the
day at a cost of fifteen marks, including a skipper with one eye and
four able seamen. The brig _Bertha_ seemed to me very cheap. She was to
be at my disposal from dawn till as far into the night as I wanted her.
All the time the bell-boy and I were exchanging increasingly sarcastic
stares she was lying at the quay ready to start at any moment. She had
been chartered in my name, and for that one day she, her skipper, and
her four able seamen, belonged entirely to me.

Gertrud was waiting on board, and had arranged a sort of nest of rugs
and cushions for me. The landlady and her servant were also there, with
a basket of home-made cakes, and cherries out of the inn garden. This
landlady, by the way, was quite ideal. Her one aim seemed to be to do
things like baking cakes for her visitors and not putting them in the
bill. I met nothing else at all like her or her husband on my journey
round Ruegen or anywhere else. Their simple kindness shall not go unsung;
and therefore do I pause here, with one foot on the quay and the other
on the brig _Bertha_, to sing it. But indeed the traveller who does not
yearn for waiters and has no prejudices against crawling up a staircase
so steep that it is practically a ladder when he wants to go to bed, who
loves quiet, is not insensible to the charms of good