s own too-humble manner that he would like to
accompany me. I let him know that I should be delighted by his society,
and away we went together. The ground was firm with last night's frost
and musical to the sabots of peasants and the iron-shod feet of horses.
The hills and fields were covered with a powdery snow that threw their
grays into a dark relief, and the air was so still that I could hear the
bell-like tinkle of chisel and stone from the quarry nearly a mile
away. We entered the Bois de Janenne together, and wandered through its
branchy solitudes by many winding pathways. There is a main road running
through this wood, cut by order of the commune for the pleasure of
visitors, and the middle of this road was white with a thin untrodden
snow. On either side this ribbon of white lay a narrower ribbon of gold
where the pines had shed their yellow needles and the overhanging
boughs had guarded them from the falling snow. The ground ivy was of all
imaginable colours, but only yielded its secrets on a close examination,
and did not call upon the eye like some of the louder reds and yellows
which still clung to the trees. Here and there the _fusain_ burned like
a flame with its vivid scarlet berries--_chapeau de cure_ the country
people call them, though the colour is a little too gay for less than a
cardinal's wearing. For the most part the undergrowth was bare, and the
branches were either purple or of the tone of a ripe filbert, so that
the atmosphere, with the reflected dull golds and bluish-reds and
reddish-blues, was in a swimming maze like that of a sunset distance,
though the eye could scarcely pierce twenty yards into the thick-grown
tangle.

Schwartz and I rambled along, now and then exchanging a sign of friendly
interest, and in a while we left the main path and wandered where we
would. Suddenly Schwartz began to hunt and sniff and bark on what I
supposed to be the recent trace of a rabbit or a hare, and I stood
still to watch him. He worried industriously here and there until he
disappeared behind a clump of brushwood, and then I heard a sudden
'Yowk!' of unmistakable terror. After this there was dead silence. I
called, but there was not even the rustle of a leaf in answer. I waited
a while and called again, but still no answer came. Not in the least
guessing what had befallen the dog, I mounted the hillside and came to
the clump of bushes behind which he had disappeared. There I found a
hole some three fee