ertrud, I am positive, is even more vague about him than I am, at the
mention of a Prussian victory her face immediately and mechanically took
on the familiar expression of him who is secretly swelling.

Beyond Stresow the road was hilly and charming, with woods drawing
sometimes to the edge of it and shading us, and sometimes drawing back
to the other side of meadows; and there were the first fields of yellow
lupins in flower, and I had the delight to which I look forward each
year as July approaches of smelling that peculiarly exquisite scent. And
so we came to the region of Baabe, passing first round the outskirts of
Sellin, a place of villas built in the woods on the east coast of Ruegen
with the sea on one side and a big lake called the Selliner See on the
other; and driving round the north end of this lake we got on to the
dullest bit of road we had yet had, running beside a railway line and
roughly paved with stones, pine-woods on our left shutting out the sea,
and on our right across a marshy flat the lake, and bare and dreary
hills.

These, then, were the woods of Baabe. Down the straight road, unpleasing
even in the distance, I could see new houses standing aimlessly about,
lodging-houses out of sight and sound of the sea waiting for
chest-sufferers, the lodging-houses of the Lonely One. 'I will not stay
at Baabe,' I called energetically to August, who had been told we were
to stop there that night, 'go on to the next place.'

The next place is Goehren, and the guide-book's praise of it is
hysterical. Filled with distrust of the guide-book I could only hope it
would be possible to sleep in it, for the shadows had grown very long
and there is nowhere to stop at beyond Goehren except Thiessow, the
farthest southern point on the island. Accordingly we drove past the two
Baabe hotels, little wooden houses built on the roadside facing the
line, with the station immediately opposite their windows. A train was
nearly due, and intending passengers were sitting in front of the hotels
drinking beer while they waited, and various conveyances had stopped
there on their way to Goehren or Sellin, and the Lonely One seemed a very
noisy, busy one to me as we rattled by over the stones, and I was glad
to turn off to the left at a sign-post pointing towards Goehren and get
on to the deep, sandy, silent forest roads.

The forest, at first only pines and rather scrubby ones, stretches the
whole way from Baabe to Goehren and gr