midday
`` I hope so , Eric , surely ; still , we can not tell what the future may bring forth ! '' said the other sadly . Mother and son were wending their way through the quaint , old-fashioned , sleepy main street of Lubeck that led to the railway station -- a bran-new modern structure that seemed strangely incongruous amidst the antique surroundings of the ancient town . Although it was past the midday hour , hardly a soul was to be seen moving about ; and the western sun lighted up the green spires of the churches and red-tiled pointed roofs of the houses , glinting from the peculiar eye-shaped dormer windows of some of the cottages with the most grotesque effect and making them appear as if winking at the onlooker . 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 .