Although my dress was quite plain, and we flattered ourselves that it was not easy to find out that this was our wedding tour, it was strange what a sympathetic consciousness every one seemed to have that I was a bride. The people were all so wonderfully kind to us--we travelled in the simplest way without either maid or man. We had nothing to limit or restrain us, no need to be at any certain place by any certain day, no necessity to please any one's convenience but our own; so we rambled on through these old picturesque streets, the bright autumn day floating unnoted over our heads, and life running on with us in an enchanted stream. There was the chill of early winter in the air already; and in those deep narrow lanes, where the paths looked like a deep cut through the houses rather than a road, on each side of which they had been built, were parties of wood-sellers chopping up into lengths for fuel great branches and limbs of trees. Everybody seemed to be laying in their winter stock, the streets resounded with the ringing of the hatchet, the German jokes and gossip of the operators, and the hoarse rattle of the rope or chain by which the loaded bucket was drawn up to the highest story, the storeroom of these antique houses. As we threaded these deep alleys arm in arm, catching peeps of interiors and visions of homely housewifery, we caught many smiling and kindly glances, and I do not doubt that many a brave little woman called from the door to her mother when she saw us coming, that here were the young Englishers again--for we had store of kreutzers and zwangzigers, and these small people very soon found it out. We had just emerged upon one of the principal streets, when Harry uttered a surprised and impatient exclamation, and turned me hastily around again, to go in another direction. "What is the matter?" cried I, in alarm. "Nothing," he said, quietly, "only a great bore whom I knew when I was last in Germany. Here, Hester, let's avoid him if we can." We turned up a steep street leading to one of the gates of the town, and Harry hurried me along at a great pace. "We are running away," said I, laughing, and out of breath. "You are a true Englishman, Harry, you flee before a bore when you would face an enemy; who is this formidable stranger?" "He is a professor at Bonn," said Harry, in a disturbed and uneasy tone. "I was there some time, you know--and knew him pretty well, but if he finds us out here, we will never get rid of him, unless we leave the town in desperation. Come, Hester, a race for it, you are not too old or too sedate for that. An army of bores would conquer with a look, like Cæsar--nothing could stand before them. Come, Hester!"