Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 3).djvu/13

 beyond a wretched existence. His gray coat of frieze, worn to the very last thread, would hardly have hung together upon his back, if he had not stuck in it as if in a sack. To travel with such a fellow in the night was by no means advisable, for it was at least possible, perhaps probable, that a gang of his companions was lurking in the woods for the booty, which he was to spy out for them. As if he himself felt the annoyance of his presence, he kept as far from me as possible, squeezing himself up in the remotest corner, but it was this very thing that now attracted me to him; my suspicions of him, or rather of his situation, began to dissipate, for it seemed that an evil-intentioned person would rather have kept at the side by the coach-door; in the dark corner where he sate there was no connexion with the country, and I now began to reproach myself for fancying evil, where perhaps there was nothing but misfortune, and that too, it might be, unmerited. My attention was more and more excited towards our new fellow-traveller; I observed him closely, and the very first