ou see," she added to her husband, "I understood that."

They were both much interested by the story of my misadventures.

"In the morning," said the husband, "I will make you something better
than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the
proverb--_dur comme un ane_; you might beat her insensible with a
cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere."

Something better! I little knew what he was offering.

The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own
I was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the
act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the
sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray
God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of
the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit
embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was
more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in
countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could
not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to
conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told me
that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of
work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a
maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant.

I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my
toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's
wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood
of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty
clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and
the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern
hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn.

It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I
had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to
the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to
stare upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw
them going afield again; and there was the life of Bouchet in a
nutshell.

When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in
the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I made her my
compliments upon its beauty.

"Oh, no," said the mother; "it is not so beautiful