A few rainy days advanced me well on the way, but at the expense of my boots, whose soles had been calculated for Count Peter, and not for the pedestrian laborer. I was already barefoot and had to procure a pair of new boots. The next morning I transacted this business with much gravity in a village where a wake was being held, and where in a booth old and new boots were sold. I selected and bargained long. I was forced to deny myself a new pair, which I would gladly have had, for the extravagant price frightened me. I therefore contented myself with an old pair, which were yet good and strong, and which the handsome, blond-haired boy who kept the stall, for present cash payment handed to me with a friendly smile and wished me good luck on my journey. I put them on at once, and left the place by the northern gate. I was deeply absorbed in my thoughts and scarcely saw where I set my feet, for I was pondering on the mine which I hoped to reach by evening, and where I hardly knew how I should introduce myself. I had not advanced two hundred strides when I observed that I had gone out of the way. I therefore looked round me, and found myself in a wild and ancient forest, where the axe appeared never to have been wielded. I still pressed forward a few steps, and beheld myself in the midst of desert rocks which were overgrown only with moss and lichens, and between which lay fields of snow and ice. The air was intensely cold; I looked round--the wood had vanished behind me. I took a few strides more--and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I stood boundlessly extended itself, and on it rested a thick, heavy fog. The sun stood blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold was insupportable.