Fred, being anxious to see as much as possible, had compelled his guide to turn out of the usual high-road, the consequence of which was that he soon got into difficulties; for although each shooscarle knew the district through which they were passing, they could not quite understand to what part of the country this peculiar Englishman was going. This is not surprising, for the peculiar Englishman was not quite sure of that point himself!
On this particular night they seemed to have got quite lost among the hills. At every stage of ten or twelve English miles they changed horses and drivers. The drivers on this particular stage were more stupid than usual, or Fred Temple was not so bright. Be that as it may, about midnight they arrived at a gloomy, savage place, lying deep among the hills, with two or three wooden huts, so poor-looking and so dirty that a well-bred dog would have objected to go into them. Fred pulled up when he came to this place, and Grant’s pony pulled up when his nose touched the back of Fred’s cart. Grant himself and his man were sound asleep. In a few seconds Sam joined them.
There was a brilliant, rosy light on the mountain-tops, but this came down in a subdued form to the travellers in the valley. The place scarcely deserved the name of a valley. It was more of a gorge. The mountains rose up like broken walls on each side, until they seemed to pierce the sky. If you could fancy that a thunderbolt had split the mountain from top to bottom, and scattered great masses of rock all over the gorge thus formed, you would have an idea of the soft of place in which our belated travellers found themselves. Yet even here there were little patches of cultivated ground, behind rocks and in out-of-the-way corners, where the poor inhabitants cultivated a little barley and grass for their cattle.
It was a lovely calm night. Had you been there, reader, you would have said it was day, not night. There was no sound to break the deep stillness of all around except the murmur of many cataracts of melted snow-water, that poured down the mountainsides like threads of silver or streams of milk. But the rush of these was so mellowed by distance that the noise was soft and agreeable.
“I say, Grant, this will never do,” said Fred gravely.
“I suppose not,” returned Grant, with a yawn.
“What say you, Sam,—shall we go on?”
“I think so. They can have nothing to give us in such miserable huts as these except gröd (barley-meal porridge), and sour milk, and dirty beds.”
“Perhaps not even so much as that,” said Fred, turning to his driver. “How far is it, my man, to the next station?”
“Ten miles, sir.”