When our prisoners got outside the Brandenburg gate, they marched with their two men in front and two behind, across the bridge, along the Brandenburg lane,--for, though called a road it was only a lane, there being in those days no high roads in Mecklenburg,--and when they came to the narrow pass leading up to the Windmill hill to which the Stemhagen folk have given the names of, "Killhorse" and "Break-neck," the guard commanded "Halt," for they could go no further. The whole of the artillery lay in the pass, and had sunk so deep in the mud that, if all the horses of the neighbourhood had been at hand--which they were not--they could not have pulled this heap of misfortune out of it. There lay the French now, and cursed and swore. Labourers were fetched from the town with spades and shovels, and fresh horses were sent for from Jürnsdorf and Klaukow, and all the while it rained so heavily that no one could keep a dry thread on his back. "Neighbour Voss," said baker Witte "what do you say to this rain?" "Fine weather for late barley," replied the Miller, "if folks have sown any." "My shirt is wringing wet," said the baker! "And my boots are filling with water," said the Miller. "Herr Burmeister, come behind me; my cloak will give you some shelter," said my uncle Herse, and he made himself a little bit broader than nature had already made him. "I am only glad that these 'slaves of the tyrant' will get a wetting through and through." My father got under the cloak, but said nothing, for something had caught his eye. Above, on the edge of the narrow pass a group of people were standing: labourers, servants and Stemhagen burghers, who had followed the procession in spite of the rain and bad weather, partly from curiosity and partly from sympathy, and amongst these people Fritz Sahlmann was slipping in and out, telling the whole story first to one and then to another of those who did not yet know it. When my father first caught sight of him, he was standing close by Inspector Bräsig of Jürnsdorf, who had come on horseback, and had to ride alongside of the French army, lest he should never see his team-horses again. The Inspector was an old friend of my father's, and my father could clearly see that old Bräsig nodded to him and whispered something in Fritz Sahlmann's ear, when the boy told him of the scrape. Fritz Sahlmann now stuck his hands in his trowsers' pockets, and began whistling; whistled himself along the edge; whistled himself down the bank; when nearly at the bottom cleverly caught his foot in the root of an old willow; stumbled quite naturally towards the prisoners; and, when close to my father, fell in the mud as if he could not help it in the least. My father bent down and raised him up. "Watch the horse," whispered Fritz. He could say no more for he was at once driven off by the French, and he climbed up the bank again.