lled me out of the straw; I was so stiff, I couldn't
move. I sat by the fire, and ate black bread and turnips, and drank
coffee; while he stood by, watching me and muttering. I couldn't
understand him well--he spoke a dialect from Hungary. He asked me: How I
got there--who I was--where I was from? I looked up in his face, and he
looked down at me, sucking his pipe. He was a big man, he lived alone
on the river, and I was tired of telling lies, so I told him the whole
thing. When I had done he just grunted. I can see him now standing over
me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and his great naked arms. He
drew me some water, and I washed and showed him my wig and moustache,
and threw them overboard. All that day we lay out on the barge in the
mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and then he would spit
into the ashes and mutter into his beard. I shall never forget that day.
The steamer was like a monster with fiery nostrils, and the other barges
were dumb creatures with eyes, where the fires were; we couldn't see the
bank, but now and then a bluff and high trees, or a castle, showed in
the mist. If I had only had paint and canvas that day!" He sighed.

"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz. As soon
as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw. At Passau
was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing happened,
and I slept in the straw. The next day I lay out on the barge deck;
there was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on the straw and
the green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I laughed--I laughed
all the time, and the barge man laughed with me. A fine fellow he was!
At Regensburg I helped them to unload; for more than a week we worked;
they nicknamed me baldhead, and when it was all over I gave the money
I earned for the unloading to the big bargeman. We kissed each other at
parting. I had still three of the gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went
to a house-painter and got work with him. For six months I stayed there
to save money; then I wrote to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told
him I was going to London. He gave me an introduction to some friends
there. I went to Hamburg, and from there to London in a cargo steamer,
and I've never been back till now."

XI

After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They could
arrest you then!"

Harz laug