The boy went more slowly, but always kept at a distance from the stranger. Oswald tried in vain to engage him in a conversation, whilst he was busy pushing the branches aside, through which the boy had just slipped before him like a wildcat. Thus they might have been walking on for a quarter of an hour when they found themselves suddenly in a small wood, which probably belonged already to the park of Berkow. The paths were carefully kept; here and there a well-chosen seat, or a weather-beaten Hermes pillar; everywhere traces of the hand of man. Then they came to a wider road, which was probably the continuation of that road on which Oswald had walked at first, and soon after to a pair of iron gates, which opened upon a fine court-yard. Cziko stopped suddenly; he pointed silently to the gates, bowed with crossed arms to Oswald, and ran back into the bushes, behind which he was almost instantly concealed. "A mysterious beginning," said the young man to himself, as he walked slowly, almost hesitatingly, towards the gates. "I wonder if it is the after-effect of my strange encounter with those gypsies, or an anticipation of what is to befall me here which gives me such a strange feeling. Perhaps I had, after all, done better to accept the carriage which the old baron offered me yesterday. I might have escaped the minister and his Primula, and, at all events, I should not arrive here in a sadly neglected and disordered costume, after the manner of a vagabond, but in state, drawn by two magnificent bays. Well, well! A man is a man for a' that, and Melitta, if I am not grievously mistaken, prefers the kernel to the shell of the nut."