ly twittering with
cold. I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the
india-rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest of the
voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my
body. The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not,
I was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe
had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running
stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard
some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag me
down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? Nature's
good-humour was only skin-deep after all.

There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream,
and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny
Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived.

ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE

A BY-DAY

The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed, I
do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services as
were here offered to the devout. And while the bells made merry in the
sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets
and colza.

In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a
foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music, "_O France, mes
amours_." It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called
in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. She was not
the first nor the second who had been taken with the song. There is
something very pathetic in the love of the French people, since the war,
for dismal patriotic music-making. I have watched a forester from Alsace
while someone was singing "_Les malheurs de la France_," at a baptismal
party in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and
took his son aside, close by where I was standing. "Listen, listen," he
said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, "and remember this, my son." A
little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him
sobbing in the darkness.

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a
sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts
are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. In
what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world
into the street? But affliction heightens love; and we shall never know
we are Englishmen until w