a great
misfortune. And every time I thought of it I could see Sister
Marie-Aimee. She was like some precious thing which the farmer had
smashed all to pieces by accident.

On the following Saturday Master Silvain and his wife left in the
morning as usual, but instead of remaining in town until evening they
came back in the afternoon with a dealer who wanted to buy some of the
lambs. I had never thought that one could go to the town and come back
again in so short a time. The idea occurred to me that one day I would
leave my lambs in the meadow and would run into the town for one kiss
from Sister Marie-Aimee. I soon found that that would not be possible,
and I decided to go off in the night. I hoped that I should not take
much longer that the farmer's horse did, and that by leaving in the
middle of the night I could be back in time to take the lambs to
pasture in the morning.

That evening I went to bed in my clothes, and when the big clock
sounded twelve I slipped out on tip-toe with my shoes in my hand. I
leaned against a cart and laced them up, and ran off as fast as I could
into the dark. I soon got past the outbuildings of the farm, and then
I saw that the night was not very dark. The wind was blowing very
hard, and big black clouds were rolling across the sky under the moon.
It was a long way to the high-road, and to get there I had to cross a
wooden bridge which was out of repair. The rain of the last few days
had swelled the little river and the water splashed up on to the bridge
through the rotten planks. I began to get nervous because the water
and the wind between them made a noise that I had never heard before.
But I refused to be frightened, and ran across the slippery bridge as
quickly as I dared.

I got to the high-road sooner than I had expected to, and I turned to
the left as I had seen the farmer turn when he went to market. But a
little further along the road divided into two and I didn't know which
road to take. I ran a little way up one road and then a little way up
another. It was the road to the left that seemed to be the likely one.
I took it, and walked fast to make up for lost time.

In the distance I saw a black mass which covered the whole country. It
seemed to be coming slowly towards me, and for a moment I wanted to
turn back and run. A dog began to bark and that gave me a little
confidence, and almost directly afterwards I saw that the black mass in
front of me was a w