ervice with the Dauphin against the English. My journey was
through a country ruinous enough, for, though the English were on the
further bank of the Loire, the partisans of the Dauphin had made a ruin
round themselves and their holds, and, not being paid, they lived upon
the country.

The further north I held, by ways broken and ruined with rains and suns,
the more bare and rugged grew the whole land. Once, stopping hard by a
hamlet, I had sat down to munch such food as I carried, and was sharing
my meal with a little brown herd-boy, who told me that he was dinnerless.
A few sheep and lean kine plucked at such scant grasses as grew among
rocks, and herbs useless but sweet-scented, when suddenly a horn was
blown from the tower of the little church. The first note of that blast
had not died away, when every cow and sheep was scampering towards the
hamlet and a kind of "barmkyn" {4} they had builded there for protection,
and the boy after them, running with his bare legs for dear life. For
me, I was too amazed to run in time, so lay skulking in the thick sweet-
smelling herbs, whence I saw certain men-at-arms gallop to the crest of a
cliff hard by, and ride on with curses, for they were not of strength to
take the barmkyn.

Such was the face of France in many counties. The fields lay weedy and
untilled; the starving peasant-folk took to the highway, every man
preying on his neighbour. Woods had grown up, and broken in upon the
roads. Howbeit, though robbers harboured therein, none of them held to
ransom a wandering poor Scots scholar.

Slowly I trudged, being often delayed, and I was now nearing Poictiers,
and thought myself well on my road to Chinon, where, as I heard, the
Dauphin lay, when I came to a place where the road should have crossed a
stream--not wide, but strong, smooth, and very deep. The stream ran
through a glen; and above the road I had long noted the towers of a
castle. But as I drew closer, I saw first that the walls were black with
fire and roofless, and that carrion birds were hovering over them, some
enemy having fallen upon the place: and next, behold, the bridge was
broken, and there was neither ford nor ferry! All the ruin was fresh,
the castle still smouldering, the kites flocking and yelling above the
trees, the planks of the bridge showing that the destruction was but of
yesterday.

This matter of the broken bridge cost me little thought, for I could swim
like an otter. But there