54 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



behind me on a bicycle, coasting like the 

 wind, and another, driving up, salutes him 

 by name, and then turns to cry after him in 

 a ringing voice, "How he ye?" The em- 

 phatic verb bespeaks a real solicitude on the 

 questioner's part ; but he is half a mile too 

 late ; he might as well have shouted to the 

 man in the moon. Presently two men in a 

 buggy come up the road, talking in breezy 

 up-country fashion about some one whose 

 name they use freely, — a name well known 

 hereabout, — and with whom they appear 

 to have business relations. " He got up 



this morning like a thousand of 



brick," one of them says. A disagreeable 

 person to work for, I should suppose. And 

 all the while a child behind the hedge is tak- 

 ing notes. Queer things we could print, if 

 it were allowable to report verbatim. 



When this free-spoken pair is far enough 

 in the lead I go back to the road again, 

 traveling slowly and keeping to the shady 

 side, with my coat on my arm. As the climb 

 grows steeper the weather grows more and 

 more like August ; and hark I a cicada is 

 shrilling in one of the forest trees, — a long- 



