Arriving at length in the city, they passed through the crooked streets, sometimes so narrow that the geese were packed from wall to wall.  Oft some jovial soldier sent a jest or a query to them across the now gray backs of the geese.  But Gretchen looked on ahead, purely and serenely.

“Gretchen, where shall I find the Adlergasse?”

“We pass through it shortly.  I will show you.  You are also a stranger in Dreiberg?”

“Yes.”

They took the next turn, and the weather-beaten sign Zum Schwartzen Adler, hanging in front of a frame house of many gables, caused the mountaineer to breathe gratefully.

“Here my journey ends, Gretchen.  The Black Eagle,” he added, in an undertone; “it is unchanged these twenty years.  Heaven send that the beds are softer than aforetime!”

They were passing a clock-mender’s shop.  The man from Jugendheit peered in the window, which had not been cleaned in an age, but there was no clock in sight to give him warning of the time, and he dared not now look at his watch.  He had a glimpse of the ancient clock-mender himself, however, huddled over a table upon which sputtered a candle.  It touched up his face with grotesque lights.  Here was age, mused the man outside the window; nothing less than fourscore years rested upon those rounded shoulders.  The face was corrugated with wrinkles, like a frosted road; eyes heavily spectacled, a ragged thatch of hair on the head, a ragged beard on the chin.  Aware of a shadow between him and the fading daylight, the clock-mender looked up from his work.  The eyes of the two men met, but only for a moment.

The mountaineer, who felt rejuvenated by this contrast, straightened his shoulders and started to cross the street to the tavern.

[Illustration:  “Good night, Gretchen.  Good luck to you.”]

“Good night, Gretchen.  Good luck to you and your geese to-morrow.”

“Thanks, Herr Ludwig.  And will you be long in the city?”

“That depends; perhaps,” adding a grim smile in answer to a grim thought.

He offered his hand, which she accepted trustfully.  He was a strange old man, but she liked him.  When she withdrew her hand, something cold and hard remained in her palm.  Wonders of all the world!  It was a piece of gold.  Her eyes went up quickly, but the giver smiled reassuringly and put a finger against his lips.

“But, Herr,” she remonstrated.

“Keep it; I give it to you.  Do not question providence, and I am her handmaiden just now.  Go along with you.”

So Gretchen in a mild state of stupefaction turned away.  Clat-clat! sang the little wooden shoes.  A plaintive gonk rose as she prodded a laggard from the dank gutter.  A piece of gold!  Clat-clat!  Clat-clat!  Surely this had been a day of marvels; two crowns from the grand duke and a piece of gold from this old man in peasant clothes.  Instinctively she knew that he was not a peasant.  But what could he be?  Comparison would have made him a king.  She was too tired and hungry to make further deductions.