“What?” said I, confounded by this obtuseness. “What? The way, of course.” He pulled up once more and turned right round on his box. “Look here----” he said, and paused. “Look where?” said I, very naturally supposing he had something to show me. “Who are you talkin’ to?” said he. The question on the face of it was so foolish that a qualm gripped my heart lest we had to do with a madman. Edelgard felt the same, for she drew closer to me. Luckily at that moment I saw a passer-by some way down the road, and springing out of the fly hastened to meet him in spite of Edelgard’s demand that I should not leave her alone. On reaching him I took off my hat and courteously asked him to direct us to Panthers, at the same time expressing my belief that the flyman was not normal. He listened with the earnest and strained attention English people gave to my utterances, an attention caused, I believe, by the slightly unpractised pronunciation combined with the number and variety of words at my command, and then going up (quite fearlessly) to the flyman he pointed in the direction entirely opposed to the one we were following and bade him go there. “I won’t take him nowhere,” said the flyman with strange passion; “he calls me a ass.” “It is not your fault,” said I (very handsomely, I thought). “You are what you were made. You cannot help yourself.” “I won’t take him nowhere,” repeated the flyman, with, if anything, increased passion. The passer-by looked from one to another with a faint smile. “The expression,” said he to the flyman, “is, you see, merely a term of recognition in the gentleman’s country. You can’t reasonably object to that, you know. Drive on like a sensible man, and get your fare.” And lifting his hat to Edelgard he continued his passing by. Well, we did finally arrive at the appointed place--indeed, my hearers next winter will know all the time that we must have, or why should I be reading this aloud?--after being forced by the flyman to walk the last twenty minutes up a hill which, he declared, his horse would not otherwise be able to ascend. The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted this last obstacle--a hard one to encounter when it is long past dinner-time. I am aware that by English clocks it was not past it, but what was that to me? My watch showed that in Storchwerder, the place our inner natures were used to, it was half-past two, a good hour beyond the time at which they are accustomed daily to be replenished, and no arbitrary theory, anyhow no perilously near approach to one, will convince a man against the evidence of his senses that he is not hungry because a foreign clock says it is not dinner-time when it is. Panthers, we found on reaching the top of the hill and pausing to regain our composure, is but a house here and a house there scattered over a [Illustration: _The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted this last obstacle_]