ot to be counted. The
geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map
represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say more
than any of them. After we had been some hours, three if I mistake not,
flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came
upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four
kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for
the honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
have been standing still.

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. The leaves
danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. The river hurried on
meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay. Little we cared. The river
knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we found
good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour,
stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent;
but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a
hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the
resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own heart, and
those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.

We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because,
where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If it
had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have paddled
right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. We met a
man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our
cruise. And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the
_Cigarette:_ who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts
of adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was quite
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession.

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
chateau in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring
fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment. German
shells from the siege of La Fere, Nuernberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl,
and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room. The
landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with
something not far short of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of her
excellence herself. After every dish was sent in, she