ads ache. What time the Black Forest peasant
rises in the summer time I am unable to say; to us they appeared to be
getting up all night. And the first thing the Black Forester does when
he gets up is to put on a pair of stout boots with wooden soles, and take
a constitutional round the house. Until he has been three times up and
down the stairs, he does not feel he is up. Once fully awake himself,
the next thing he does is to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up a
horse. (The Black Forest house being built generally on the side of a
steep hill, the ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft at the
bottom.) Then the horse, it would seem, must also have its
constitutional round the house; and this seen to, the man goes downstairs
into the kitchen and begins to chop wood, and when he has chopped
sufficient wood he feels pleased with himself and begins to sing. All
things considered, we came to the conclusion we could not do better than
follow the excellent example set us. Even George was quite eager to get
up that morning.

We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at five.
Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in the village it
appeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly miss. I suppose
everybody knows this sort of road. Generally, it leads you back to where
you started from; and when it doesn't, you wish it did, so that at all
events you might know where you were. I foresaw evil from the very
first, and before we had accomplished a couple of miles we came up with
it. The road divided into three. A worm-eaten sign-post indicated that
the path to the left led to a place that we had never heard of--that was
on no map. Its other arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road,
had disappeared. The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly led
back again to the village.

"The old man said distinctly," so Harris reminded us, "keep straight on
round the hill."

"Which hill?" George asked, pertinently.

We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of them
little.

"He told us," continued Harris, "that we should come to a wood."

"I see no reason to doubt him," commented George, "whichever road we
take."

As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.

"And he said," murmured Harris, "that we should reach the top in about an
hour and a half."

"There it is," said George, "that I begin to disbelieve him."

"Well, what shall w