a fit leader of her set; or was the choice guided by chance?" Joseph
could not tell me, and I suppose that I shall never know.

The big, lumbering forms crowded so closely round us in the twilight
shadows, that now and then, to force a passage, Joseph was obliged to
pull a slowly whisking tail, resembling almost exactly an
old-fashioned bell-rope. Presently we had made our way past the herd,
which was shut from our sight by the curtain of evening, though up on
the mountain-tops it was still golden day.

"There," said Joseph, pointing, "is the Cantine de Proz."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

The Scraping of Acquaintance

"You shall be treated to . . . ironical smiles and mockings."
--WALT WHITMAN.

"Up the hillside yonder, through the morning."
--ROBERT BROWNING.

I saw, standing desolate in the basin of mountains, an old house of
grey stone, very square, very plain, very resolute and staunch of
physiognomy. The windows were still unlighted, and it looked a gloomy
home for months of winter cold and snow. Suddenly, as we approached,
rather wearily now, a yellow gleam flashed out in an upper window.

"That is the spare room for strangers," said Joseph, and I thought
that there was a note of anxiety in his voice.

"Perhaps someone has arrived before us," I remarked. "I hadn't thought
of that, as you said so few people ever stopped at the Cantine over
night."

"Had you noticed, Monsieur, that after all we never passed the party
with the donkeys?" asked my muleteer.

"I had forgotten them."

"I had not, but it was Monsieur's pleasure to go slowly; to stop for
the views, to look at the ruined torts, and to trace the old road. We
gave them time to get far ahead. I was always watching, but never saw
them. The _anes_ had more endurance than I thought, and as for that
Innocentina, she is a daughter of Satan; she would know no fatigue."

"It would be like that little brat to gobble up the one spare room of
the Cantine as he did the one chicken of the 'Dejeuner,'" I muttered.
"But we shall see what we shall see."

We went on more rapidly, and soon arrived at the bottom of a steep
flight of stone steps which led up to the door of the Cantine. A man
came forward to greet us--a fine fellow, with the frank and lofty
bearing of one whose life is passed in high altitudes.

"Can we have supper and accommodation for the night at