My next trial was made in a large village. There were boats enough and men enough there, but no one would take me; not even though I offered ten dollars, half the money I had, for the short passage to the Mecklenburg coast, where I might consider myself tolerably safe. I do not know whether, as was possible, they knew who I was, or merely saw something suspicious in the wild-looking young man with a gun on his shoulder who asked a passage to another country; or whether, as I seemed in such extreme haste, and appeared to have money, they merely wished, by delay and apparent reluctance, to extort a higher fare. But after an hour had been spent in parleying, and Karl Bollmann said he was willing to take me, if Johann Peters would lend his boat; and Peters, for his part, was ready to go, but only in Bollmann's boat; and Christian Rickmann, who was standing by with his hands in his pockets, said he would take me with his boys, but not for less than thirty dollars; and all then held a whispering consultation together, during which the whole population, women and children included, gathered around--I thought it prudent not to await the result, but turned abruptly away, and strode off towards the dunes. A half-dozen followed me, but I showed them my gun, upon which they kept back. The same day I had another proof that the pursuit for me was still kept up, which indeed I had never doubted. It was towards evening, when reconnoitring from the edge of the woods a piece of open country that I had to cross, I caught sight of two mounted patrols on the road, talking with a shepherd who had driven his flock upon the strip of heath between the road and the woods. I observed that they several times pointed to the forest, but the shepherd's answers seemed satisfactory, for they presently rode away in the opposite direction, and disappeared beyond some rising ground. When I thought them far enough, I came out of my concealment and joined the shepherd, who was knitting a long black stocking, and whose simple face gave a sufficient guaranty of the security of the step. He told me, in answer to my inquiries, that the patrol were on the track of a man who had committed a murder. He was a tall young man, they had said, and a desperate villain; but they would have him yet. The lively imagination of the stocking-knitter had probably had sufficient time in the interval between the departure of the patrol and my appearance, to paint the portrait of the fugitive from justice in the most frightful colors. At all events he did not recognize me, but took me at once for what I gave myself out to be: a huntsman, who was stopping on a visit at one of the neighboring estates, and not knowing the country well, had lost his way. He gave me minute directions how to find my way, thanked me for the coin I put in his hand, and dropped his knitting in astonishment as he saw me, instead of following his directions, strike across the heath into the forest.