He had had my
money; I had nothing to give the second man, and sadly I exchanged the
quick trot of the brown horses for the walking pace of the jades in the
peat-cart.
My first experience of man's perfidy.
At last I was there. On a high, wide hill--high and wide as it seemed to
me then--towered the huge schoolhouse, a miniature Christiansborg
Castle, with the schoolmaster's apartments on the right and the
schoolroom on the left. And the schoolmaster came out smiling, holding a
pipe which was a good deal taller than I, held out his hand, and asked
me to come in, gave me coffee at once, and expressed the profoundest
contempt for the peasant who had charged two rigsdaler for such a
trifle, and then left me in the road. I asked at once for pen and
paper, and wrote in cipher to a comrade, with whom I had concocted this
mysterious means of communication, asking him to tell my parents that I
had been most kindly received. I felt a kind of shyness at the
schoolmaster seeing what I wrote home from his house. I gave him the
sheet, and begged him to fold it up, as I could not do it myself. There
were no envelopes in those days. But what was my surprise to hear him,
without further ado, read aloud with a smile, from my manufactured
cipher: "I have been most kindly received," etc.
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