Then he purchased garments suitable
for a respectable craftsman, and having attired himself in these, with
a stout sword banging from his leathern belt, a wallet containing
a change of garments and a number of light tools used in clockmaking,
with a long staff in his hand, and fifty ducats sewed in the lining
of the doublet, he set out on foot on his journey.
It was nigh three weeks from the time when he started before he
arrived at Prague, for not only had he to make a very long detour
to avoid the contending armies, but he was forced to wait at each
considerable town until he could join a company of travellers going
in the same direction, for the whole country so swarmed with disbanded
soldiers, plunderers, and marauding bands that none thought of
traversing the roads save in parties sufficiently strong to defend
themselves and their property. None of those with whom he journeyed
suspected Malcolm to be aught but what he professed himself -- a
craftsman who had served his time at a clockmaker's in Nuremberg,
and who was on his way to seek for employment in Vienna.
During his three years and a half residence in Germany he had come
to speak the language like a native, and, indeed, the dialect of
the different provinces varied so widely, that, even had he spoken
the language with less fluency, no suspicion would have arisen of
his being a foreigner.
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