ot
from floor to floor into the loft. Having guided us safely thither, he
quitted us at once with a "good night;" taking his lantern with him, and
leaving us to make our beds in the thick darkness as we could. The straw
was not straw: it was short-cut hay, old enough to have lost all scent of
hay, and to have acquired some other scents less pleasing to the nose;
hay, trodden, pressed, and matted down, without a vestige in it of its
ancient elasticity. There was nothing in it to remind us of a summer
tumble on the hay-cock. The barn roof was open, and the March night wind
whistled over us. I took off my boots to ease my swollen feet; took my
coat off that I might spread it over my chest as a counterpane; and
struggled in vain to work a hole for my feet into the hard knotted bank
of hay. So I spent the night, just so much not asleep that I was always
conscious, dimly, of the snoring of the baker, and awoke sometimes to
wonder what the landlord's cock had supped upon, for it was continually
crowing in its sleep, on the barn-floor below. When morning broke we
rose and had a brisk wash at the pump, scraped the mud from our boots,
and breakfasted. The baker and I had plain dry bread and hot coffee.
The tinman breakfasted on milk. He said it was better--poor fellow! he
knew it was cheaper. By seven o'clock we were all afoot again, the baker
journeying to Hamburg, the tinman and I road-companions to Lubeck.

At noon, after a five hours' walk, a pleasant roadside inn with a deep
gable roof and snug curtains behind its lattice windows, tempted me to
rest and dine. "We shall get a good dinner here," I said; "let us go
in." The tinman would hear of no such thing. "We must get on to
Lubeck," he replied. "Two more hours of steady walking and we shall be
there." Poor youth! At Lubeck he could demand a dinner at his herberge,
and he had no chance of any other. So we trudged on till the tall
turrets and steeples of Lubeck rose on the horizon. The tinman desired
to know what my intentions were. Was I going straight on to Berlin
without working? Should I seek work at Lubeck? If not, of course I
would take the _viaticum_. "I thought not," I told him. "Ah, then," he
said, "you have some money." The viaticum is the tramp-money that may be
claimed from his guild by the travelling workman. Germans, like other
people, like to take pills gilded, and so they cloak the awkward incident
of poverty under a Latin name.

Lube