g way off?" he asked, when he
had mounted his horse.

"Oh! no, sir, a bare league at most."

The commandant set out, fully persuaded that two leagues remained ahead
of him. Yet after all he soon caught a glimpse through the trees of the
little town's first cluster of houses, and then of all the roofs that
crowded about a conical steeple, whose slates were secured to the angles
of the wooden framework by sheets of tin that glittered in the sun. This
sort of roof, which has a peculiar appearance, denotes the nearness of
the borders of Savoy, where it is very common. The valley is wide at
this particular point, and a fair number of houses pleasantly situated,
either in the little plain or along the side of the mountain stream,
lend human interest to the well-tilled spot, a stronghold with no
apparent outlet among the mountains that surround it.

It was noon when Genestas reined in his horse beneath an avenue of
elm-trees half-way up the hillside, and only a few paces from the town,
to ask the group of children who stood before him for M. Benassis'
house. At first the children looked at each other, then they scrutinized
the stranger with the expression that they usually wear when they set
eyes upon anything for the first time; a different curiosity and
a different thought in every little face. Then the boldest and the
merriest of the band, a little bright-eyed urchin, with bare, muddy
feet, repeated his words over again, in child fashion.

"M. Benassis' house, sir?" adding, "I will show you the way there."

He walked along in front of the horse, prompted quite as much by a wish
to gain a kind of importance by being in the stranger's company, as by
a child's love of being useful, or the imperative craving to be doing
something, that possesses mind and body at his age. The officer followed
him for the entire length of the principal street of the country town.
The way was paved with cobblestones, and wound in and out among the
houses, which their owners had erected along its course in the most
arbitrary fashion. In one place a bake-house had been built out into
the middle of the roadway; in another a gable protruded, partially
obstructing the passage, and yet farther on a mountain stream flowed
across it in a runnel. Genestas noticed a fair number of roofs of tarred
shingle, but yet more of them were thatched; a few were tiled, and
some seven or eight (belonging no doubt to the cure, the justice of the
peace, and some of