was intended to serve him for a support; and trudged wearily forward, now sliding down the steep banks, now stepping painfully from stone to stone, without seeking the slightest assistance from the vexatious staff, whose weight, nevertheless, kept rapidly increasing.
The traveller changed his staff from the right hand to the left; then he grasped it convulsively with both hands; next he laid it across his shoulder, changing it alternately from left to right; all would not do—the inexorable staff grew weightier and weightier. Finally, he laid it across his neck, like a milkman’s yoke, and supporting it in this posture with both his hands, he staggered forward on his toilsome path. At last the burden became insupportable even to a peasant’s brawny shoulders; for awhile he attempted to drag it behind him, but it seemed to take root in the ground, and required a still greater exercise of strength and patience to drag it forward in this manner. As a final expedient, he placed himself astride upon it,—when, lo! away it sprung with the most violent bounds—now bearing its rider close upon the brink of the most frightful precipices, now skipping over the plains in the most erratic style imaginable.
The perspiration ran down in streams from the astonished rider’s face; but still he grasped his strange steed with convulsive energy. At last, after many a perilous bound, he found himself in a fir plantation, and his staff becoming stationary, he got off it and cast it from him with feelings of mingled surprise and detestation. Scarcely had he done so before he beheld his own trusty staff lying before him upon the grass, whole and sound, and without reflecting how it had come there, he grasped it firmly and hastened briskly forward.
The wood now became less gloomy,—the aspect of the country more friendly,—before him lay a green pleasant meadow,—in the distance gleamed his own beloved hamlet. The traveller’s strength returned to him; he began to ponder on the marvels of his journey, and, for the first time, he thought
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