s, as he walked to and fro, seeking a carriage holding a
conversational-looking person. At Dover the wind was hard as the
ice-bound steps which he descended, and the sea rolled in dolefully
about the tall cliffs, melting far away into the bleak grayness of
the sky. But more doleful than the bleak sea was sullen Picardy. Mike
could not sleep, and his eyes fed upon the bleak black of swampy
plains, utterly mournful, strangely different from green and gladsome
England. And two margins of this doleful land remained impressed upon
his mind; the first, a low grange, discoloured, crouching on the
plain, and curtained by seven lamentable poplars, and Mike thought of
the human beings that came from it, to see only a void landscape, and
to labour in bleak fields. He remembered also a marsh with osier-beds
and pools of water; and in the largest of these there was a black and
broken boat. Thin sterile hills stretched their starved forms in the
distance, and in the raw wintry light this landscape seemed like a
page of the primitive world, and the strange creature striving with
an oar recalled our ancestors.

Paris was steeped in great darkness and starlight, and the cab made
slow and painful way through the frost-bound streets. The amble and
the sliding of the horse was exasperating, the drive unendurable with
uncertainty and cold, and Mike hammered his frozen feet on the
curving floor of the vehicle. Street succeeded street, all growing
meaner as they neared the Gare de Lyons. Fearing he should miss the
express he called to the impassive driver to hasten the vehicle.
Three minutes remained to take his ticket and choose a carriage, and
hoping for sleep and dreams of Lily, he rolled himself up in a rug
for which he had paid sixty guineas, and fell asleep.

Ten hours after, he was roused by the guard, and stretching his
stiffened limbs, he looked out, and in the vague morning saw towzled
and dilapidated travellers, slipping upon the thin ice that covered
the platform, striving to reach long, rough tables, spread with
coffee, fruit, and wine. Mike drank some coffee, and thinking of Mrs.
Byril's roses, wondered when they should get into the sunshine.

As the train moved out of the platform the twilight vanished into
daylight, the sky flushed, and he saw a scant land, ragged and torn
with twisted plants, cacti and others, gashed and red, and savage as
a negress's lips. So he saw the South through the breath-misted
windows. He lay back