Farther on, along a soft-footed country road that undulated over a landscape blooming with fruit-trees and immense lilac-bushes, I came upon a youthful shepherd hobbling after his grazing sheep on a crude wooden leg that seemed to have been fashioned with an ax from the trunk of a sapling. I attempted to rouse him to a recital of his war experiences, but he scowled at my first hint and preserved a moody silence. A much older man, tending his fat cattle a mile beyond, was, on the contrary, eager to “fight the war over again.” It suggested to him none of the bitter memories that assailed the one-legged shepherd. He had been too old to serve, and his two sons, cultivating a field across the way, had returned in full health. He expressed a mild thankfulness that it was over, however, because of the restrictions it had imposed upon the peasants. For every cow he possessed he was obliged to deliver two liters of milk a day. An official milk-gatherer from the town passed each morning. Any cow that habitually fell below the standard set must be reported ready for slaughter. Unproductive hens suffered the same fate. He owned ten _Stück_ of them, a hundred and fifty in all, with four roosters to keep them company, and was forced to contribute four hundred and fifty eggs a week to the town larder. At good prices? Oh yes, the prices were not bad—three times those of before the war, but by no means what the “hamsterers” would gladly pay. Of course, he smiled contentedly, there were still milk and eggs left over for his own use. The country people did not suffer from hunger. They could not afford to, with their constant hard labor. It was different with the city folks, who put in short hours and sat down much of the time. He had heard that all the war restrictions would be over in August. He certainly hoped so, for life was growing very tiresome with all these regulations. Every one of his half-hundred cows wore about its neck a broad board, decorated in colors with fantastic figures, from which hung a large bell. Each of the latter was distinct in timbre and all of fine tone. The chimes produced by the grazing herd was a real music that the breeze wafted to my ears until I had passed the crest of the next hillock. How so much metal suitable for cannon-making had escaped the Kaiser’s brass-gatherers was a mystery which the extraordinary influence of the peasant class only partly explained. Beyond the medieval ruin of Hohenstein, which had served me for half the afternoon as a lighthouse does the mariner, the narrow road led gradually downward and brought me once more toward sunset, to the river valley. The railway followed the stream closely, piercing the many towering crags with its tunnels. But the broad highroad wound in great curves that almost doubled the distance, avoiding every slightest ridge, as if the road-builders of centuries ago had been bent on making the journey through this charming region as long as possible.