Pretending to play with the Bashkir's horse, which was despatching its oats near the garden-gate, I passed repeatedly around the corner of the house, gradually increasing the intervals of my reappearance until I had succeeded in fastening the bridle to the fence by the nearest imitation possible of a gordian knot. Then coming into view once more, and beholding my confiding jailer about to seal the fate of his last fish, I again put the corner of the house between him and me, this time to return no more. My next prank was to leap from the saddle of the Cossack steed over the fence into the garden, and thence over another fence into a shady orchard, without being seen by mortal eye. At the outer end of an adjoining barnyard an old shed with a sunken thatched roof beckoned me into its friendly shelter, and there, between some old hay-ladders and broken wheels, I twisted myself through the rotten straw into a cavity to which I confided my trembling body until dusk. There was of course a moment of critical suspense, but except the faint, hesitative bark of a small dog that rushed past my hiding-place and suddenly turned back as if on a false alarm, there was not a sound or a sign indicating that my movements had been observed or that search was being made for the fugitive. Did not the jolly old hero know the difference between two and three, or had he forgotten me over his fish? However that may be, the last stroke of the village curfew found me once more in the open air. There were just stars enough peeping out between the fleeting clouds to light my devious path through brush and field to the house of a trusty friend, whom I aroused from his peaceful slumber at eleven o'clock. He is the same forester (_Oberförster_) of whose attachment for me I mentioned several instances in my last year's correspondence. His delight on recognizing me was unfeigned, and he would have been too happy to shelter me for any length of time but for the fact that the same hostile command that had captured us in Lüneburg was now retreating toward Dömitz, having again been driven across the Elbe by the expected advance of Marshal Davoust's corps. Of course I cannot remain here to compromise my friend, but shall proceed two leagues farther, to the house of a wealthy farmer, where I may be concealed until enabled to reach the South Baltic coast. There, at Christinenfeld, near Klütz, I shall find more friends, my trunk with money, clothes and other effects, if this property has not been betrayed into the enemy's hand. ELDENA, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 15th April.