geways."
The boy was wonderfully jolted up, and his head was bleeding, from cuts
which it had got from small stones on the way.

Harris and I gathered him up and set him on a stone, and by that time
the men and women had scampered down and brought his cap.

Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages
and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and
commiserated, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his
bruises in. And such another clatter of tongues! All who had seen the
catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder
than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way
up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and
thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done.

Harris and I were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming
along; how Hans Gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw
Peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way,
and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and
brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over.
We were as much heroes as anybody else, except Peter, and were so
recognized; we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter's
mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and
beer with everybody, and had a most sociable good time; and when we left
we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back LEB'
WOHL's until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly
new friends forever.

We accomplished our undertaking. At half past eight in the evening
we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of
Allerheiligen--one hundred and forty-six miles. This is the distance by
pedometer; the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance maps make it only
ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are
usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances.

CHAPTER XXIV

[I Protect the Empress of Germany]

That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only one we were ever
to have which was all the way downhill. We took the train next morning
and returned to Baden-Baden through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat was
crowded, too; for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking
a "pleasure" excursion. Hot! the sky was an oven--and a sound one,
too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. An