solate plain. This path led them amid marshes
and woods, until it brought them out into a glade with a broad stream
swirling swiftly down the centre of it. Through this the horses splashed
their way, and on the farther shore Sir Nigel announced to them that
they were now within the borders of the land of France. For some miles
they still followed the same lonely track, which led them through
a dense wood, and then widening out, curved down to an open rolling
country, such as they had traversed between Aiguillon and Cahors.

If it were grim and desolate upon the English border, however, what
can describe the hideous barrenness of this ten times harried tract
of France? The whole face of the country was scarred and disfigured,
mottled over with the black blotches of burned farm-steadings, and
the gray, gaunt gable-ends of what had been chateaux. Broken fences,
crumbling walls, vineyards littered with stones, the shattered arches of
bridges--look where you might, the signs of ruin and rapine met the eye.
Here and there only, on the farthest sky-line, the gnarled turrets of a
castle, or the graceful pinnacles of church or of monastery showed where
the forces of the sword or of the spirit had preserved some small islet
of security in this universal flood of misery. Moodily and in silence
the little party rode along the narrow and irregular track, their hearts
weighed down by this far-stretching land of despair. It was indeed
a stricken and a blighted country, and a man might have ridden from
Auvergne in the north to the marches of Foix, nor ever seen a smiling
village or a thriving homestead.

From time to time as they advanced they saw strange lean figures
scraping and scratching amid the weeds and thistles, who, on sight
of the band of horsemen, threw up their arms and dived in among the
brushwood, as shy and as swift as wild animals. More than once, however,
they came on families by the wayside, who were too weak from hunger and
disease to fly, so that they could but sit like hares on a tussock, with
panting chests and terror in their eyes. So gaunt were these poor folk,
so worn and spent--with bent and knotted frames, and sullen, hopeless,
mutinous faces--that it made the young Englishman heart-sick to look
upon them. Indeed, it seemed as though all hope and light had gone so
far from them that it was not to be brought back; for when Sir Nigel
threw down a handful of silver among them there came no softening of
their li