“Is there a third seat?” asked one.
“It walks!” cried another.
—The ascent was so gradual and the gradient so easy that only once was I forced to get down and walk.—But what’s wrong now? The lamp of course. Three times did it fall on the road just as we were going at good pace. Once J—— picked it up quietly; next he kicked it and beat it in place with a stone; the third time, “Let it lie there!” said he. A peasant stopped to get it, examined it, and—put it in his pocket.—The road wound slowly up to St. Martin.—La Pacaudière, the next village, was seven kilometres farther on, and there was but one short hill to climb on the way, a boy told us. And so to La Pacaudière we went.
In a few minutes we were at the top, and far below, a broad valley, well wooded and now bathed in soft evening light, stretched to hills we knew were the Cevennes we must cross on the morrow, no longer blue and indistinct, as in the morning, but green and near.—We let the machine carry us, flying by pretty sloping orchards and meadows when the descent was steep, creeping between them when it was but slight.—The sun was low in the west, and the evening air deliciously cool. We had left the peasants many kilometres behind, and we had no company, save once when a girl in a scarlet cloak walked along a footpath on the hillside, singing as she went.
WITH THE WIND.
“NAME of God! it is six hours!” and a loud hammering at the window below wakened us with a start, and then we heard shutters banging and the wind blowing a blast over the hills. For the first time in our journey we were out of bed before seven, and the next minute J——’s head was out of the window. The trees on the hilltops were all bent towards the Cevennes, and as he pulled in his head the shutters came crashing after him.——