essions, furbishing their weapons,
and preparing for the march which lay before them. Over the Tarn and the
Garonne, through the vast quagmires of Armagnac, past the swift-flowing
Losse, and so down the long valley of the Adour, there was many a
long league to be crossed ere they could join themselves to that dark
war-cloud which was drifting slowly southwards to the line of the snowy
peaks, beyond which the banner of England had never yet been seen.

CHAPTER XXXIII. HOW THE ARMY MADE THE PASSAGE OF RONCESVALLES.

The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and
profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her
snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to
the sea of Biscay. South of the Adour the jagged line of mountains which
fringe the sky-line send out long granite claws, running down into the
lowlands and dividing them into "gaves" or stretches of valley. Hillocks
grow into hills, and hills into mountains, each range overlying its
neighbor, until they soar up in the giant chain which raises its
spotless and untrodden peaks, white and dazzling, against the pale blue
wintry sky.

A quiet land is this--a land where the slow-moving Basque, with his flat
biretta-cap, his red sash and his hempen sandals, tills his scanty farm
or drives his lean flock to their hill-side pastures. It is the country
of the wolf and the isard, of the brown bear and the mountain-goat, a
land of bare rock and of rushing water. Yet here it was that the will of
a great prince had now assembled a gallant army; so that from the Adour
to the passes of Navarre the barren valleys and wind-swept wastes were
populous with soldiers and loud with the shouting of orders and the
neighing of horses. For the banners of war had been flung to the wind
once more, and over those glistening peaks was the highway along which
Honor pointed in an age when men had chosen her as their guide.

And now all was ready for the enterprise. From Dax to St. Jean
Pied-du-Port the country was mottled with the white tents of Gascons,
Aquitanians and English, all eager for the advance. From all sides the
free companions had trooped in, until not less than twelve thousand of
these veteran troops were cantoned along the frontiers of Navarre. From
England had arrived the prince's brother, the Duke of Lancaster, with
four hundred knights in his train and a strong company of archers. Above
all, an heir to the throne