Part 27 (1/2)

'Tut, tut--well do I nohat is the object I have in view'

'Don't be so proud Re to be like a conscience toonwards the poor oldalternations But I tell thee there is no hope of setting sail without the English madam unless thou remainest here while I secretly slip away'

'I won't reements to me, dearest Professor, and you'll see we'll secretly slip away together'

Mrs Harvey-Broeeping in at that arments that trailed, our conversation had to end abruptly The landlord lit the candles; the landlady brought in the soup; Brosy appeared dressed as one dresses in civilised regions 'Cheer up,' I whispered to the Professor as I got up from the sofa; and he cheered up so immediately and so excessively that before I could stop hi to do, he had actually chuckedThe one re the hours that followed this chin-chucking was: 'I a retired, without her husband, to yet another island Why this regrettable multiplicity of islands?'

To which I could only answer that I did not know

The next day being Sunday, a small boy went up into the wooden belfry of the church, which was just opposite an to toll two bells The belfry is built separate from the church, and commands a view into the room of the inn that wasleisurely fro hilasses and exa to stare hih a small he was also a bold boy and not to be abashed, and as I would not give in either we stared at each other steadily between the tolls till nine o'clock, when the bell-ringing ceased, service began, and he reluctantly went down into the church, where I suppose he had to join in the singing of the tune to which in England the hy, for it presently floated out into the quiet littleof Sunday While I lingered at thelistening to this, I saw Mrs Harvey-Browne e the o into the church In an instant I had whisked intodownstairs to the Professor as strolling up and down a rose-bordered path in the garden at the back of the house, inforht now be looked upon as circumvented

'What, already? Thou art truly a wonderful ally!' he exclai,' I replied modestly; as indeed it was

'Let us start at once then,' he cried briskly; and we accordingly started, slipping out of the house and round the corner down to the quay

The sun was shi+ning, the ground was drying, there was a slight breeze froently to Hiddensee if it kept up in about four hours All ht before with the aid of August and Gertrud, and the brig _Bertha_, quite an i craft that plied on week-days, weather per, between Wiek and Stralsund, had been hired for the day at a cost of fifteena skipper with one eye and four able sea _Bertha_ seemed to me very cheap She was to be at ht as I wanted her

All the tily sarcastic stares she was lying at the quay ready to start at any moment She had been chartered in my name, and for that one day she, her skipper, and her four able sea on board, and had arranged a sort of nest of rugs and cushi+ons for me The landlady and her servant were also there, with a basket of hoarden This landlady, by the as quite ideal Her one ai cakes for her visitors and not putting the else at all like her or her husband on en or anywhere else Their si; and therefore do I pause here, with one foot on the quay and the other on the brig _Bertha_, to sing it But indeed the traveller who does not yearn for waiters and has no prejudices against crawling up a staircase so steep that it is practically a ladder when he wants to go to bed, who loves quiet, is not insensible to the charreeable pastimes, could be extremely happy at a very small cost at Wiek And when all other pleasures are exhausted he can hire the _Bertha_ and go to Hiddensee and study sea-birds

'Thou takest the excellent but unprepossessing Gertrud with thee?'

inquired the Professor in a slightly displeased voice, seeing her i hoisted

'Yes I don't like being sick without her'

'Sick! There will hardly be a sufficiency of wind for the needs of the vessel--hoilt thou be sick in a calay voyage down the Wieker Bodden, over the little dancing waves, under the serene sue through dust to rippling silence and freshness! The Professor was in such spirits that he could hardly be kept fro the yards, and had to be fetched dohen he began to cla for the first gliane The wind could hardly be said to blow us along, it was so very gentle, but it did waft us along smoothly and steadily, and Wiek slipped into distance and its bells into silence, and the occasional solitary farms on the flat shores slid away one after the other, and the farthest point ahead came to meet us, dropped astern, became the farthest point behind, and ere far on our hile ere thinking we could hardly beThe reader who looks at the entle wind it came to be nearly twelve before we rounded the corner of the Wieker Bodden, passed a sandbank croith hundreds of sea-gulls, and headed for the northern end of Hiddensee

Hiddensee lay stretched out fro in the sun It is absolutely flat, a mere sandbank, except at the northern end where it swells up into hills and a lighthouse

There are only two villages on it with inns, the one called Vitte, built on a strip of sand so low, so level with the sea that it looks as if an extra big wave, or indeed any wave, ht over it and clean it off the face of the earth; and the other called Kloster, where Charlotte was

I observe that on the h it were a place of some importance It is a very pretty, very ses, one little line of thee, with a hill at the back, and some way up the hill a small, dilapidated church, forlorn and spireless, in a churchyard bare of trees

We dropped anchor in the glassy bay about two o'clock, the last bit of the Vitter Bodden having been slow, alhy, there not being enough water within a hundred yards to float so majestic a craft as the _Bertha_ The skipper leaned over the side of his brig watching us go and wishi+ng us _viel Vergnugen_ The dinghy and the tere to wait at the little landing-stage till such tiain Gertrud ca the landlady's basket of food

'OnceGertrud with thee?' inquired the Professor with increased displeasure

'Yes To carry the cakes'

'Tut, tut' And hethat sounded irritable about the _lieber Gott_ having strewn the world with so many plain women

'_This_ isn't the time to bother about plain women,' I said 'Don't you feel in every fibre that you are within a stone's throw of your Charlotte? I aht her this tiotten Charlotte, and all his face grew radiant at the rehteen he leapt ashore, and we hurried along a narrow rushy path at the water's edge to the one inn, a sreen fields and placid water A tri away coffee cups froarden, and of her we asked, with so after our many disappointments, whether Frau Nieberlein were there