ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer
here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind
carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy,
breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the
highlands of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky.

I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier;
so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at the bridge of
Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of
some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, "_D'ou
'st-ce-que vous venez?_" She did it with so high an air that she set me
laughing, and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who
reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I
crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan.

UPPER GEVAUDAN

_The way also here was very wearisome
through dirt and slabbiness; nor was
there on all this ground so much as one
inn or victualling-house wherein to
refresh the feebler sort._

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

A CAMP IN THE DARK

The next day (Tuesday, September 24th) it was two o'clock in the
afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired,
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future, and have no
more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le
Cheylard l'Eveque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A
man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought
it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey
might cover the same distance in four hours.

All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed
alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly;
plentiful hurrying clouds--some, dragging veils of straight rain-shower,
others massed and luminous as though promising snow--careered out of the
north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated
basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like
sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines,
woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few
naked cottages and bleak fields,--these were the characters of the
country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and
stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into