Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/80

 went the goat, at his end of the rope, and, with him, the dog at the other end. Between them, they kept the rope about six inches above the ground, and with it they remorselessly mowed down every living thing they came across in that once peaceful village. In the course of less than half a minute we counted fourteen persons sitting down in the middle of the road. Eight of them were cursing the goat, four were cursing the dog, and two of them were cursing the old man for keeping the goat, one of these two, and the more violent one, being the man's own wife.

The train left at this juncture. We entreated the railway officials to let us stop and see the show out. The play was becoming quite interesting. It was so full of movement. But they said that we were half-an-hour late as it was, and that they dared not.

We leaned out of the window, and watched for as long as we could; and after the village was lost to view in the distance, we could still, by listening carefully, hear the thuds, as one after another of the inhabitants sat down and began to swear.

At about eleven o'clock we had some beer—you can generally obtain such light refreshment as bottled beer and coffee and rolls from the guard on a through longdistance train in Germany—took off our boots, and saying "Good-night" to each other, made a great show of going to sleep. But we never succeeded in getting there. They wanted to see one's ticket too often for one to get fairly off.

Every few minutes, so it seemed to me, though in reality the intervals may perhaps have been longer, a ghostly face would appear at the carriage-window, and ask to see our tickets.