over the stones. They walked one behind the other like tramps, but their
pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, ill-made, sombre,
Scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her Sunday's best, with
an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and
proffering, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of
obscene and blasphemous oaths.

I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west
and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening
his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my
path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I
shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside,
and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by
herself, I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They
stopped as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was
a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more
answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But
this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and,
apologising for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until
they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended--rather
mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then the
mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in
the Scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She told
me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a half's road before her.
And then, without salutation, the pair strode forward again up the
hillside in the gathering dusk.

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp
ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The view,
looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mezenc