CHAPTER VII
ON THE ROAD TO MEMEL
On a certain day in the January following Jena the snow was falling fast.
It clung to the tree limbs and turned the feathery firs to fairy trees. On the low bushes and oaks the ice glittered and gleamed, and a piercing blast, sweeping through the branches, crackled the crusted limbs and filled the air with a mysterious sound of coldness. Now and then a high-runnered sleigh dashed along the highway, its driver muffled to the eyes in fur, the breath frozen on his beard or moustaches. From the Baltic Sea the breath of the frozen North swept over the East Prussian land and, obedient to its command, life seemed to still its slightest sound and the whole world freeze into silence.
Suddenly the voice of a child broke the quiet.
"Grandfather,"—oh, how tired it sounded,—"truly, dear grandfather, I can go no farther."
It was little Bettina, wrapped in a woollen shawl and trudging by the side of old Hans, whose face was almost hidden in a huge cape of fur.
They were still on their journey, though Königsberg had been passed two days before.
"Ja, ja, Liebchen," the old man paused in the road; "it is cold, indeed. But have courage, little one; we shall soon reach a village, and then sausages and bread."