il I could have dropped my finger on it blindfold.

Two or three pitched battles brought us to a friendly arrangement. The
colonel exacted my promise that if I saw my father at Sarkeld in
Eppenwelzen I would not stay with him longer than seven days: and that if
he was not there I would journey home forthwith. When I had yielded the
promise frankly on my honour, he introduced me to a banker of the city,
who agreed to furnish me money to carry me on to England in case I should
require it. A diligence engaged to deliver me within a few miles of
Sarkeld. I wrote a letter to my aunt Dorothy, telling her facts, and one
to the squire, beginning, 'We were caught on our arrival in London by the
thickest fog ever remembered,' as if it had been settled on my departure
from Riversley that Temple and I were bound for London. Miss Goodwin was
my post-bag. She said when we had dined, about two hours before the
starting of the diligence, 'Don't you think you ought to go and wish that
captain of the vessel you sailed in goodbye?' I fell into her plot so far
as to walk down to the quays on the river-side and reconnoitre the ship.
But there I saw my prison. I kissed my hand to Captain Welsh's mainmast
rather ironically, though not without regard for him. Miss Goodwin lifted
her eyelids at our reappearance. As she made no confession of her treason
I did not accuse her, and perhaps it was owing to a movement of her
conscience that at our parting she drew me to her near enough for a kiss
to come of itself.

Four-and-twenty German words of essential service to a traveller in
Germany constituted our knowledge of the language, and these were on
paper transcribed by Miss Goodwin's own hand. In the gloom of the
diligence, packed between Germans of a size that not even Tacitus had
prepared me for, smoked over from all sides, it was a fascinating study.
Temple and I exchanged the paper half-hourly while the light lasted. When
that had fled, nothing was left us to combat the sensation that we were
in the depths of a manure-bed, for the windows were closed, the
tobacco-smoke thickened, the hides of animals wrapping our immense
companions reeked; fire occasionally glowed in their pipe-bowls; they
were silent, and gave out smoke and heat incessantly, like inanimate
forces of nature. I had most fantastic ideas,--that I had taken root and
ripened, and must expect my head to drop off at any instant: that I was
deep down, wedged in the solid mass of the ea