"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----"
"Yonder tree is the north-east corner of the section," replied Wolfgang, pointing to an oak standing at no great distance, the greater part of the rind on one side of which was peeled off, and on which some roughly-carved numbers and marks were still discernible.
"Then the dwelling-house has fallen down at some earlier time?" said Siebert, junior.
"There it stands!" replied the farmer. "A better dwelling than that was, in former times, you seldom meet with in this wild neighbourhood. How many buildings are specified, then?"
"A dwelling-house, with chimney--a smoking-house--a kitchen--a stable--and a maize-crib," read Siebert, senior, from his pocket-book, which he had got out.