rth. But I need not repeat
them: they were accurately translated in imagination from my physical
miseries. The dim revival of light, when I had well-nigh ceased to hope
for it, showed us all like malefactors imperfectly hanged, or drowned
wretches in a cabin under water. I had one Colossus bulging over my
shoulder! Temple was blotted out. His face, emerging from beneath a block
of curly bearskin, was like that of one frozen in wonderment. Outside
there was a melting snow on the higher hills; the clouds over them grew
steel-blue. We were going through a valley in a fir-forest.

CHAPTER XV

WE ARE ACCOSTED BY A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE LADY IN THE FOREST

Bowls of hot coffee and milk, with white rolls of bread to dip in them,
refreshed us at a forest inn. For some minutes after the meal Temple and
I talked like interchangeing puffs of steam, but soon subsided to our
staring fit. The pipes were lit again. What we heard sounded like a
language of the rocks and caves, and roots plucked up, a language of
gluttons feasting; the word ja was like a door always on the hinge in
every mouth. Dumpy children, bulky men, compressed old women with baked
faces, and comical squat dogs, kept the villages partly alive. We
observed one young urchin sitting on a stone opposite a dog, and he and
the dog took alternate bites off a platter-shaped cake, big enough to
require both his hands to hold it. Whether the dog ever snapped more than
his share was matter of speculation to us. It was an education for him in
good manners, and when we were sitting at dinner we wished our companions
had enjoyed it. They fed with their heads in their plates, splashed and
clattered jaws, without paying us any hospitable attention whatever, so
that we had the dish of Lazarus. They were perfectly kind,
notwithstanding, and allowed a portion of my great map of Germany to lie
spread over their knees in the diligence, whilst Temple and I pored along
the lines of the rivers. One would thrust his square-nailed finger to the
name of a city and pronounce it; one gave us lessons in the expression of
the vowels, with the softening of three of them, which seemed like a
regulation drill movement for taking an egg into the mouth, and showing
repentance of the act. 'Sarkeld,' we exclaimed mutually, and they made a
galloping motion of their hands, pointing beyond the hills. Sarkeld was
to the right, Sarkeld to the left, as the road wound on. Sarkeld was
straight in front of us