"I have never been here before," replied Wolfgang, quietly, "and must therefore examine the place first. But if your land has not been cultivated for fifteen years, you may rely, in case this really should not be it, that it will hardly look better than that which lies before you! But we will hope for the best! Look you, a road has once led through here, this tree has formerly been blazed, although the bark has almost grown together again. It will be best to leave the wagon with the women behind us, and go round this wilderness, first of all; if we can't find the houses, we may come upon the section line—for according to your deed the land has really been surveyed—then we shall know directly where we are and what we are about."
"I doubt that!" said the shoemaker, to Schmidt. "One tree looks to me just like another, here; and if I were called upon, at this moment, to say from which direction we came here, I should have to guess!"
"Well, I must admit, too," said Schmidt, "that so long as the roads here are in no better condition, so long I shall not wander far from the rest—for whoever loses himself is done for!"
"Come along!" said the tailor; "there's a house to be searched for!"
"Where is the house, then?" asked the shoemaker, quickly.
"Well, that's just what they're searching for!" grinned the tailor. "Stupid as you are, you must know that!"
"Hark ye," said the shoemaker, savagely, "drop your larks—none of us are in the humour to listen to your nonsense just now! But let us go along, too; I should like to know whether our guide has found the right way!"
Scipio had now to halt with his team; and, in fact, he would not have been able, without the help of the axe, to advance any further; for every road and outlet was wildly overgrown, and scarcely passable on foot, much less with a four-wheeled wagon. Following, therefore, the course of a small brook which ran in a north-easterly direction towards the Big Halchee, after a short march, keeping to the margin of the thicket, and, as Wolfgang now positively asserted, former field, they reached the Big Halchee, and also, close to its soft, friable banks, a little log hut. However, Wolfgang warned them from entering it; for the earth round about, as he observed to the by-standers, was cracked, and the little house was every hour exposed to be precipitated into the muddy bed of the stream, as, apparently, had happened to the former appendant and now vanished buildings, of which Pastor Hehrmann was then thinking.
"But is it not possible," said Becher, despondingly, "that we may be at the wrong place? You might, perhaps——"