Greenmantle - John Buchan

village. There were one or two people about now, but they did not seem to notice
me.
I went into the woods again and walked for two miles till I halted for
breakfast. I was not feeling quite so fit now, and I did not make much of my
provisions, beyond eating a biscuit and some chocolate. I felt very thirsty and
longed for hot tea. In an icy pool I washed and with infinite agony shaved my
beard. That razor was the worst of its species, and my eyes were running all the
time with the pain of the operation. Then I took off the postman's coat and cap,
and buried them below some bushes. I was now a clean-shaven German
pedestrian with a green cape and hat, and an absurd walking-stick with an ironshod
end—the sort of person who roams in thousands over the Fatherland in
summer, but is a rarish bird in mid-winter.
The Tourists' Guide was a fortunate purchase, for it contained a big map of
Bavaria which gave me my bearings. I was certainly not forty miles from the
Danube—more like thirty. The road through the village I had left would have
taken me to it. I had only to walk due south and I would reach it before night. So
far as I could make out there were long tongues of forest running down to the
river, and I resolved to keep to the woodlands. At the worst I would meet a
forester or two, and I had a good enough story for them. On the highroad there
might be awkward questions.
When I started out again I felt very stiff and the cold seemed to be growing
intense. This puzzled me, for I had not minded it much up to now, and, being
warm-blooded by nature, it never used to worry me. A sharp winter night on the
high-veld was a long sight chillier than anything I had struck so far in Europe.
But now my teeth were chattering and the marrow seemed to be freezing in my
bones.
The day had started bright and clear, but a wrack of grey clouds soon covered
the sky, and a wind from the east began to whistle. As I stumbled along through
the snowy undergrowth I kept longing for bright warm places. I thought of those
long days on the veld when the earth was like a great yellow bowl, with white
roads running to the horizon and a tiny white farm basking in the heart of it, with
its blue dam and patches of bright green lucerne. I thought of those baking days
on the east coast, when the sea was like mother-of-pearl and the sky one burning
turquoise. But most of all I thought of warm scented noons on trek, when one
dozed in the shadow of the wagon and sniffed the wood-smoke from the fire