holiday by all the economy which could eke
out my fifty pounds. I thought I could make it last for one hundred days
at least. I was a good walker, and had no very luxurious tastes in the
matter of accommodation or food; I had as fair a knowledge of German and
French as any untravelled Englishman can have; and I resolved to avoid
expensive hotels such as my own countrymen frequented.

I have stated this much about myself to explain how I fell in with the
little story that I am going to record, but with which I had not much
to do,--my part in it being little more than that of a sympathizing
spectator. I had been through France into Switzerland, where I had gone
beyond my strength in the way of walking, and I was on my way home, when
one evening I came to the village of Heppenheim, on the Berg-Strasse. I
had strolled about the dirty town of Worms all morning, and dined in a
filthy hotel; and after that I had crossed the Rhine, and walked through
Lorsch to Heppenheim. I was unnaturally tired and languid as I dragged
myself up the rough-paved and irregular village street to the inn
recommended to me. It was a large building, with a green court before
it. A cross-looking but scrupulously clean hostess received me, and
showed me into a large room with a dinner-table in it, which, though it
might have accommodated thirty or forty guests, only stretched down half
the length of the eating-room. There were windows at each end of the
room; two looked to the front of the house, on which the evening shadows
had already fallen; the opposite two were partly doors, opening into a
large garden full of trained fruit-trees and beds of vegetables, amongst
which rose-bushes and other flowers seemed to grow by permission, not by
original intention. There was a stove at each end of the room, which, I
suspect, had originally been divided into two. The door by which I had
entered was exactly in the middle, and opposite to it was another,
leading to a great bed-chamber, which my hostess showed me as my
sleeping quarters for the night.

If the place had been much less clean and inviting, I should have
remained there; I was almost surprised myself at my vis inertiae; once
seated in the last warm rays of the slanting sun by the garden window,
I was disinclined to move, or even to speak. My hostess had taken my
orders as to my evening meal, and had left me. The sun went down, and I
grew shivery. The vast room looked cold and bare; the darkness broug