rstood by the girl and her mother. I sat at
a window and drew the ugly church on principle. Oh, the vile sketch!

Worthy of that Lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of
wonderful things. I gave up all hope of by-roads, and I determined to
push back obliquely to the highway again--obliquely in order to save
time! Nepios!

These 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner
of abominable tracks. Some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts
merely, some were open lanes of rank grass; and along most there went
a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed
desolation. IN so far as I can be said to have had a way at all, I
lost it. I could not ask my way because my only ultimate goal was
Piacenza, and that was far off. I did not know the name of any place
between. Two or three groups of houses I passed, and sometimes church
towers glimmered through the rain. I passed a larger and wider road
than the rest, but obviously not my road; I pressed on and passed
another; and by this time, having ploughed up Lombardy for some four
hours, I was utterly lost. I no longer felt the north, and, for all I
knew, I might be going backwards. The only certain thing was that I
was somewhere in the belt between the highroad and the Lambro, and
that was little enough to know at the close of such a day. Grown
desperate, I clamoured within my mind for a miracle; and it was not
long before I saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and going
ahead of me at a pace much slower than a walk--the pace of a horse
crawling. I caught him up, and, doubting much whether he would
understand a word, I said to him repeatedly--

_'La granda via? La via a Piacenza?'_

He shook his head as though to indicate that this filthy lane was not
the road. Just as I had despaired of learning anything, he pointed
with his arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road we were
on, and nodded. He moved his hand up and down. I had been going north!

On getting this sign I did not wait for a cross road, but jumped the
little ditch and pushed through long grass, across further ditches,
along the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of the huge weight
on my boots and of the oozing ground, till I saw against the rainy sky
a line of telegraph poles. For the first time since they were made the
sight of them gave a man joy. There was a long stagnant pond full of
reeds between me and the railroad; but, as I outflanke