and the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a
cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen
together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline
of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch
to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where the
Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a gorge.

Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld a
village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had been told that the
neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road
smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the fields;
and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed
past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been to church
and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At Bouchet St.
Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my destination, and
on the other side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads and
treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt
sharply; my arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up
the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberge.



I HAVE A GOAD


The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have
ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey. Indeed,
it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two
stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite,
so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture of the