hole concern is slow. From Bjerkager to Garlid, and
from Garlid to Hov, including all delays, a distance of three hours
and a half ordinary time, it took me all day. No entreaties, no offers
of extra compensation, no expressions of impatience produced the
slightest effect. The people at these places were not to be hurried.
Kind and good-natured as they were in appearance and expression, I
found them the most bull-headed and intractable race of beings on the
face of the earth.

I was particularly struck with the depressing lethargy that hung over
a wretched little place called Soknaes, which I made out to reach the
next morning. A dead silence reigned over the miserable huddle of
buildings by the roadside. The houses looked green and mildewed. A few
forlorn chickens in the stable-yard, and a half-starved dog crouching
under the door-steps, too poor to bark and too lazy to move, were the
only signs of life that greeted me as I approached. I knocked at the
door, but no answer was made to the summons. Not a living soul was to
be seen around the place. I attempted to whistle and shout. Still the
terrible silence remained unbroken save by the dismal echoes of my own
melancholy music. At length I went to a rickety shed under which some
carts were drawn up for shelter from the weather. In one of the carts,
half-covered in a bundle of straw, was a bundle of clothes. It moved
as I drew near; it thrust a boot out over the tail-board; it shook
itself; it emitted a curious sound between a grunt and a yawn; it
raised itself up and shook off a portion of the straw; it thrust a red
night-cap out of the mass of shapeless rubbish; the night-cap
contained a head and a matted shock of hair; there was a withered,
old-fashioned little face on the front part of the head, underneath
the shock of hair, which opened its mouth and eyes, and gazed at me
vacantly; it was an old man or a boy, I could not tell which till it
spoke, when I discovered that it was something between the two, and
was the skydskaarl or hostler of this remarkable establishment. He
rubbed his eyes and stared again. "Hello!" said I. He grunted out
something. "Heste og Cariole!" said I. "Ja! Ja!" grunted the hostler,
and then he began to get out of the cart. I suppose he creaked, though
I do not pretend that the sounds were audible. First one leg came out;
slowly it was followed by the other. When they both got to the ground,
he pushed his body gradually over the tail-board, an