“Can’t be an American, after all,” thought Hugh, “or he’d be more sociable. I’ll look up his name in the register.”
When he did look it up, he found it was Wilbur P. Hoffmann, Jersey City; that settled it.
3.
The next morning, before starting out, he sought the proprietor of the library where he had bought his guide-book, and inquired the best road for his journey.
“But, monsieur,” said the man, “it would be better to take the train to Cassamozza; it is very flat and uninteresting as far as that. There the mountains begin, and you go up the valley of the Golo. The train starts in half an hour. You have just time to catch it, if you hurry.”
The idea was a good one. Hugh hurried back to the hotel, leaped up the two flights of stairs and burst into his room. He grabbed his valise, which he had packed before going out, and rushed down into the street. Within ten minutes he was seated in the train.
The first class carriage in which he found himself was very small and very dirty. He had to rub the windowpane with a newspaper in order to see out. On the walls of the compartment were advertisements of the wine of Cap Corse, a local apéritif, and a liquor called Cederatine. There were three other passengers in the carriage, a fat, spectacled man and two thin, spectacled women. From their accent he thought they were German at first, but later decided they were Dutch. They did not interest him. When the train started he turned his attention to the scenery. A green level stretched away to brown marshes that in turn yielded to the grey of the sea. At the tiny stations, sheltered by eucalyptus trees, peasants laden with baskets got in and out. Hugh attached a strap to the rings of his valise so that he could sling it from his shoulder. He had packed it with bread, cheese and fruit, a tin billy and a packet of tea.
He had decided to walk for two hours after reaching Cassamozza, then lunch in the open, so that it was with a sense of cheerful adventure that he descended at the little station and started out on his long tramp. How hot the way was! As he strode up the valley of the Golo the sun was scorching, the road a dazzling white; below him was a furious torrent, now dashing in dazzling foam amid great boulders, now swirling greenly in gravelly pools. It delighted him; it was so pure, so wild, so free. There was the maquis, too. It rose on either hand, clothing the mountain sides with rich dark green. It was pathless, dense, the best cover in the world. Here in the old days bandits had defied the forces of law and order; but now, doubtless, they were all dead.
With every step he realized more and more that he was advancing into the land of legend and history. He passed a hoary shepherd, who might have stepped from the pages of romance. The old man had a long beard and was dressed in brown corduroy. On his head he wore a picturesque beret, and strapped to his back was a huge blue umbrella and a gun. He was leaning motionless on his long staff, gazing over a flock of black-haired sheep that mottled the hillside. Hugh felt the poetry of it—the mountains soaring to meet the sky, the white torrent roaring in his ears, the solitary shepherd, white-bearded as a patriarch of old.
He was becoming hungry, furiously hungry, and he thought with joy of the simple fare tucked away in his valise. He climbed down to the river, and in the shadow of a great rock made a cheerful fire of driftwood. Now for the tea. Confound it! What was the matter with his valise? His key refused to turn in the lock.