we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat
in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a
journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon
all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And, above
all, where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment
for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit
of brisk living, and, above all, when it is healthful, is just so much
gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our
pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand and deliver. A
swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in
a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our
accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper
Oise.

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain ourselves and our
content. The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch
ourselves on shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on
the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world
excellent. It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it
with extreme complacency.

On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill, a
ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals.
At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky: for
all the world (as the _Cigarette_ declared) like a toy Burns who should
have just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy. He was the only living thing
within view, unless we are to count the river.

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed
among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon
musical on a chime of bells. There was something very sweet and taking
in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells speak so
intelligibly or sing so melodiously as these. It must have been to some
such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang "Come away,
Death," in the Shakespearian Illyria. There is so often a threatening
note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I
believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but
these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive
cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were