down the results of his researches, and
then finally read off his work to me with this note at the bottom--"The
little finger of his left hand is crooked."

The hostess of the London Tavern, when I got back to my quarters, must
have heard about my wealth. That pleasant little maiden lady told me all
about her house, and how it had been named afresh after the King of
Prussia slept there on his way to London, where he was to act as sponsor
to the Prince of Wales. I, who had been turned away from the doors of
the humblest inns, was flattered and courted by a landlady who had
entertained His Majesty of Prussia. The neatest of chambermaids
conducted me to an elegant bedchamber--"her own room," the little old
maid had said as I left her--and there I slept upon the couch sacred to
her maiden meditations, among hangings white as snow.

The next morning I went out into Perleberg,--a ricketty old place, full
of rats and legends. There is a colossal figure in the market-place of
an armed knight, eighteen or twenty feet high, gazing eternally into the
fruit baskets below. He has his head uncovered, his hand upon his sword,
and is made of stone; but who he is nobody seemed to know; I was only
told that the statue would turn any one to stone who fixed his eyes upon
it in intense gaze for a sufficiently long time. I visited the chief
jeweller, a wonderful man, who was said to have visited nearly all parts
of the known world except London and Paris. I found him with one
workman, very busy, but not doing much; and he was very civil, although
manifestly labouring under the fear that I had come to ask for a
"_viaticum_." I did not. I went back to eat a hearty breakfast at the
London Tavern, where I found the mistress gracious, and the handmaid very
chatty and coquettish. From her talk I half concluded that I was
believed to be an Englishman who travelled like a journeyman for the
humour of the thing: the English are so odd, and at the London Tavern
they had not been without experience of English ways. My display of the
gold pieces must have been communicated to them overnight, by one of the
townspeople who heard me tell the magistrate at what inn I was staying.

From Perleberg to Keritz was eighteen miles. Upon the road I came up
with a poor fellow limping pitiably. He had a flat wooden box upon his
back, being a tramping glazier; and he made snail's progress, having his
left thigh swollen by much walking. I loitered with h