er with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night
after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this
perturbing concert of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a
difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was
myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind
sang to a different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and
hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and
subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to
listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at
the foreign clamour in my ears.

Twice in the course of the dark hours--once when a stone galled me
underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing
angry, pawed and stamped upon the road--I was recalled for a brief while
to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge
of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time
(Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the
mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the
ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied to
a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable
patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the
experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant
it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed
me would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in
the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience, except when my
feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat's Pastors of
the Desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had
felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear
sensations.

With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and,
breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see in
what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with
a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have
been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such
as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a
random woodside nook in Gevaudan--not knowing north from south, as
strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland
cast