hin a thousand miles of them. No highroad penetrated
this secluded spot, and hence it lay secure, while ruin and devastation
raged at either side of it. As the wind was from the west, nothing could
be heard of the cannonade towards Moosburg, and the low hills completely
shut out all signs of the conflict. I halted at a little wayside forge
to have a loose shoe fastened, and in the crowd of gazers who stood
around me, wondering at my gay trappings and gaudy uniform, not one
had the slightest suspicion that I was other than Austrian. One old man
asked me if it were not true that the 'French were coming?' and another
laughed, and said, 'They had better not'; and there was all they knew
of that terrible struggle--the shock that was to rend in twain a great
empire!

Full of varied thought on this theme I mounted and rode forward. At
first, the narrow roads were so deep and heavy, that I made little
progress; occasionally, too, I came to little streams, traversed by
a bridge of a single plank, and was either compelled to swim my horse
across, or wander long distances in search of a ford. These obstructions
made me impatient, and my impatience but served to delay me more, and
all my efforts to push directly forwards only tended to embarrass me.
I could not ask for guidance, since I knew not the name of a single
village or town, and to have inquired for the direction in which the
troops were stationed might very possibly have brought me into danger.

At last, and after some hours of toilsome wandering, I reached a
small wayside inn, and, resolving to obtain some information of my
whereabouts, I asked whither the road led that passed through a long,
low, swampy plain, and disappeared in a pine wood.

'To Landshut,' was the answer.

'And the distance?'

'Three German miles,' said the host; 'but they are worse than five; for
since the new line has been opened this road has fallen into neglect.
Two of the bridges are broken, and a landslip has completely blocked up
the passage at another place.'

'Then how am I to gain the new road?'

Alas! there was nothing for it but going back to the forge where I had
stopped three hours and a half before, and whence I could take a narrow
bridle-path to Fleisheim, that would bring me out on the great road. The
very thought of retracing my way was intolerable; many of the places I
had leaped my horse over would have been impossible to cross from the
opposite side; once I narrowly escaped