hanging woods, rising steeply to a great height, so shut the
valley in that I was puzzled to think how a man could leave it
save by the road I had come. The cottages, which were no more
than mean, small huts, ran in a straggling double line, with many
gaps--through fallen trees and ill-cleared meadows. Among them
a noisy brook ran in and out, and the inhabitants--charcoal-
burners, or swine-herds, or poor devils of the like class, were
no better than their dwellings. I looked in vain for the
Chateau. It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.

The man led me into the common room of the tavern--a low-roofed,
poor place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with
smoke and use. The fire--a great half-burned tree--smouldered on
a stone hearth, raised a foot from the floor. A huge black pot
simmered over it, and beside one window lounged a country fellow
talking with the goodwife. In the dusk I could not see his face,
but I gave the woman a word, and sat down to wait for my supper.

She seemed more silent than the common run of her kind; but this
might be because her husband was present. While she moved about
getting my meal, he took his place against the door-post and fell
to staring at me so persistently that I felt by no means at my
ease. He was a tall, strong fellow, with a shaggy moustache and
brown beard, cut in the mode Henri Quatre; and on the subject of
that king--a safe one, I knew, with a Bearnais--and on that
alone, I found it possible to make him talk. Even then there was
a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade me abstain from
questions; so that as the darkness deepened behind him, and the
firelight played more and more strongly on his features, and I
thought of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote