It seemed like a scene of a bygone age reproduced on the canvas of some Flemish artist; and, but that Eric and his mother were accustomed to it, they must have rubbed their eyes, like Rip Van Winkle when he came down from the goblin-haunted mountain into the old village of his youth, in doubt whether all was real, thinking it might be a dream.

Presently, however, they were at the railway station, and they would have been convinced, if they had felt inclined to believe otherwise, that they were living in the present.

But, even here, amid all the hissing of steam, and creaking of carriages, and whirr of moving machinery, the queer old-world costumes of the peasantry, with their quaint hats and mantles, which more resembled the stage properties of a Christmas pantomime than the known dress of any people of the period, all spoke of the past--a past when the great Barbarossa reigned in Central Europe, and when there were "Robbers of the Rhine," and "Forty thousand virgins," in company with Saint Ursula, canonising the sainted and scented city of Cologne.

Ah, those days of long ago! "Here we are at last, mother," said Eric, slinging the bag containing his sea kit on to the railway platform.

"The old engine is getting its steam up, and we'll soon be off.