"Ah—not that," he rejoined. "You are already somebody. I know it well."
"So they have buried Kickel to-day! And where are the others, then?"
"The few people have already gone on. Not many of them followed him. He was only a poor pauper."
"You have surely been one of the bearers?"
"No," said he; "I have only followed on after. There has been no praying even, because they said he had been a heathen. I thought to myself that he wasn't any worse than most other people, and that he had had bad luck—it was certainly his fate. Now in God's name he has rest."
"What bad luck did he have, then?" was my question. I believed that I was at last near to the satisfaction of my old and now re-awakened curiosity.
"You will have heard of the story before," said my road companion.
"Yes, just rumours; but never knew where they came from. Do you know anything exactly?"
"I know all about it," said he.
And I had led him on so far that he began to tell me everything. It is again many years since then, but one never forgets such things, and now I will tell the story of Kickel.