"How far is it to Iwis?" said Felix.

"Twenty-seven miles," replied the dame; "and if you take my advice, you
had better walk twenty-seven miles there, than two miles back to the
bridge over the river."

Someone now called from the opposite bank, and she started with the boat
to fetch another passenger.

"Thank you, very much," said Felix, as he wished her good day; "but why
did not the man at the other ferry tell me I could cross here?"

The woman laughed outright. "Do you suppose he was going to put a penny
in my way when he could not get it himself?"

So mean and petty is the world! Felix entered the second city and walked
some distance through it, when he recollected that he had not eaten for
some time. He looked in vain for an inn, but upon speaking to a man who
was leaning on his crutch at a doorway, he was at once asked to enter,
and all that the house afforded was put before him. The man with the
crutch sat down opposite, and remarked that most of the folk were gone
to the camp, but he could not because his foot had been injured. He then
went on to tell how it had happened, with the usual garrulity of the
wounded. He was assisting to place the beam of a battering-ram upon a
truck (it took ten horses to draw it) when a lever snapped, and the beam
fell. Had the beam itself touched him he would have been killed on the
spot; as it was, only a part of the broken lever or pole hit him. Thrown
with such force, the weight of the ram driving it, the fragment of the
pole grazed his leg, and either broke one of the small bones that form
the arch of the instep, or so bruised it that it was worse than broken.