The yellow light of the few lanterns show nothing but high board
walls and snow drifts, stone heaps, and now and then the remains
of a neglected garden. Here and there a stunted tree or a wild
shrub bent their twigs under the white burden which the winter had
laid upon them. Ludwig Amster, who had walked this street for
several years, knew his path so well that he could take it
blindfolded. The darkness did not worry him, but he walked somewhat
more slowly than usual, for he knew that under the thin covering of
fresh-fallen snow there lay the ice of the night before. He walked
carefully, watching for the slippery places.

He had been walking about half an hour, perhaps, when he came to a
cross street. Here he noticed the tracks of a wagon, the trace
still quite fresh, as the slowly falling flakes did not yet cover it.
The tracks led out towards the north, out on to the hilly, open
fields.

Amster was somewhat astonished. It was very seldom that a carriage
came into this neighbourhood, and yet these narrow wheel-tracks
could have been made only by an equipage of that character. The
heavy trucks which passed these roads occasionally had much wider
wheels. But Amster was to find still more to astonish him.

In one corner near the cross-roads stood a solitary lamp-post. The
light of the lamp fell sharply on the snow, on the wagon tracks,
and - on something else besides.

Amster halted, bent down to look at it, and shook his head as if in
doubt.