the basket arranged to her satisfaction, the umbrella placed at a
pleasing angle, she balances herself upon the edge of the seat, and
glances fearfully from side to side as we swing along the smooth road.
Once, when the wheel passes over a stone, she seems to murmur a prayer.

"Madame is not afraid?" we say.

"O, very much. These diligences are most dangerous." And now she is
glancing over her shoulder at a rocky wall of mountains which follows
the road at a distance. "They might fall." And she shudders with the
thought. We assure her that it is impossible; but she has heard of a
rock falling upon a diligence, and thinks it was upon this road. And all
the horror of the fearful catastrophe is depicted upon her face.
Gradually we learn that the little old woman has never travelled in a
diligence before; that she has never before made any journey, in fact.
For forty years she has kept the house of the _cure_ in her native
village. Now, she tells us with a sigh, and uplifted eyes, he has
"become dead," and she is obliged to seek a home elsewhere among
strangers. Here she turns away her eyes, which grow dim as her smile,
and for a moment forgets her fears.

We are approaching a village. She hastily searches her basket and brings
out the crumpled letter which had been thrown into her lap. As we dart
through the narrow street and across an open square, she leans out,
utters a word in a sharp, excited tone, and, to our surprise, throws the
letter far out into the dust of the street. An idle lounger in the
square starts at her voice, runs heavily across the street, and picks it
up. She sinks back, all cheerful smiles again. She has chanced upon the
very man to whom the letter was addressed.

The dust rolls up from the great wheels. She exchanges the hat upon her
head for the one over her arm, covering the former carefully with a
corner of her apron. This, she tells us, as she arranges the second
upon her head, she was accustomed to wear when she picked vegetables of
a morning in the garden of the good _cure_. And the sighs return with
the recollection of her master.

The day wears on with heat and sifting dust. By and by, at another
village, a filthy, dull-faced peasant clambers up the ladder and
stumbles into a vacant place. We shrink away from him in disgust. Our
little old woman only furtively draws aside her neat petticoats. Soon
she engages him in conversation. We see her lean far forward with
intense, questioning gaz