that journey to Augsburg,
but the weariness of the hours was very great, and the continuation
of the motion oppressed her sorely. Then joined to this suffering was
the feeling that she was going to a strange world in which no one
would receive her kindly. She had money to take her to Cologne, but
she would have none to bring her back again. It seemed to her as she
went that there could be no prospect to her returning to a home which
she had disgraced so thoroughly.

At Mannheim she found that she was obliged to wait over four hours
before the boat started. She quitted the railway a little after
midnight, and she was told that she was to be on board before five
in the morning. The night was piercing cold, though never so cold
as had been that other night; and she was dismayed at the thought
of wandering about in that desolate town. Some one, however, had
compassion on her, and she was taken to a small inn, in which she
rested on a bed without removing her clothes. When she rose in the
morning, she walked down to the boat without a word of complaint, but
she found that her limbs were hardly able to carry her. An idea came
across her mind that if the people saw that she was ill they would
not take her upon the boat. She crawled on, and took her place among
the poorer passengers before the funnels. For a considerable time no
one noticed her, as she sat shivering in the cold morning air on a
damp bench. At last a market-woman going down to Mayence asked her a
question. Was she ill? Before they had reached Mayence she had told
her whole story to the market-woman. "May God temper the wind for
thee, my shorn lamb!" said the market-woman to Linda, as she left
her; "for it seems that thou hast been shorn very close." By this
time, with the assistance of the woman, she had found a place below
in which she could lie down, and there she remained till she learned
that the boat had reached Cologne. Some one in authority on board
the vessel had been told that she was ill; and as they had reached
Cologne also at night, she was allowed to remain on board till
the next morning. With the early dawn she was astir, and the full
daylight of the March morning was hardly perfect in the heavens when
she found herself standing before the door of a house in the city, to
which she had been brought as being the residence of her uncle.

She was now, in truth, so weak and ill that she could hardly stand.
Her clothes had not been off her back since