reet, but a succession of open
places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine
to Our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this,
upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. What
went ye out for to see? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of
its own. I found a board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for
the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering
church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed forty-eight
francs ten centimes for the "Work of the Propagation of the Faith." Some
of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land.
Cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh,
while Balquhidder and Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to
the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with
evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow.

The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not
ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes,
the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest.
There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at
the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be
forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much
interested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept belonged to
them; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and
counseled me warmly to summon him at law--"because I might have died."
The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of
uncreamed milk.

"You will do yourself an evil," she said. "Permit me to boil it for
you."

After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an
infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay requested, to make a
bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry,
and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest
daughter let down a hinged table in the chimney-corner for my
convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an
omelette before I left. The table was thick with dust; for, as they
explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look
up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to
the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my
legs were scorched by the blaze.