For nearly an hour nothing was heard but the horse's tread and the rattling of the wheels. Ivo lay on his mother's bosom with his arms around her. Once he made his way out of the warm covering and asked, "Bart, have you a cloak?"
"Yes: Nat gave me the horse-cloth."
Ivo again sank upon his mother's bosom, and, overpowered by sorrow and fatigue, he fell asleep. Blest lot of childhood, that the breath of slumber is sufficient to wipe all its bitterness away!
The road led almost wholly through forests. They passed through Muehringen, traversed the lovely valley of the Eiach, and left the bathing-place of Imnau behind, before ever it occurred to Ivo to look about him. Not until they came down the steep that leads into Haigerloch did he fairly awake; and he was almost frightened to see the town far down in the ravine encircled by the frowning hills. As day broke they felt the cold more keenly; for it is as if Night, when she arises to quit the earth, gathered all her strength about her to leave the traces of her presence as deep as possible.
They stopped at Hechingen, at the Little Horse, where a young girl was standing under the door. Perhaps this reminded Ivo of Emmerence; for he said, "Mother, shall we eat the duck now?"
"No: we'll have it for dinner at Gamertingen, and get them to make us a nice soup besides."
The bright sunshine in the Killer Valley, the constant change of scene, and the novel details of rural life which he saw in the "Rauh Alb" Mountains, cheered Ivo a little; and when he saw a large herd of cattle grazing he said to Nat, "Mind you take good care of my Brindle."
"There's an end of my care of him: your father has sold him to Buchmaier, and he is coming to fetch him to-day and break him in."
Ivo was too well acquainted with the stages of a domestic animal's life to be much grieved at this news: he only said, "Well, Buchmaier is a good man, and deals well by man and beast; so I guess he won't work him too hard. And, besides, he don't yoke two oxen into one yoke, but gives each his own, so they're not worried quite so much."
The sun was near setting when they reached the valley of the Danube. Nat became quite lively. With his head bent back, he told all sorts of stories of the neighboring town of Munderkingen, of which much the same jokes are told as are sometimes expended upon the Schildburgers; for these towns are to the Wurtembergers or Suabians what the Suabians are to the Germans outside of themselves, and something like what the Irish are to the English and Americans,--a tribe upon which every cobbler of wit patches a shred of his facetiousness in the cheap and durable form of a "bull." Ivo laughed heartily, and said, "I wish you and I could travel about together for a whole year."