still have been as far from ready to proceed
as when we returned we found him.

La Maligne, lie said, could not eat her
provender anywhere but in the stable, and
had been taken out of the shafts for that
purpose. It was a work of time to restore her
to that position, and truss her up for farther
exertion.

There were cravings of appetite, also, on the
part of Monsieur Jerome, which could not be
disregarded. In short, a whole hour was
frittered away before we resumed our journey.

It was now six o'clock. We might as well
have dined, but neither of us was in the
humour to do so, though it would have been
better to have accepted the landlady's obliging
invitation.

"We shall get on famously now!" was
Monsieur Jerome's encouraging exclamation,
as he drove out of Bernay. And so we did,
for nearly half a kilo. Then came a hill,— a
mountain I should say,— up which it was
impossible, as Monsieur Jerome said, for the
stoutest horse to trot. La Maligne never
tried; but zigzagged leisurely till she gained
the summit, where she thought it prudent to
rest, before she exerted herself further. At
the season of the year when this journey was
undertaken, day and night were nearly of an
equal length, and half an hour after we left
Bernay it got dark. Monsieur Jerome's
desire for conversation had returned, but
whether he remembered my wife's objection
to the loudness of his voice, or subdued it on
account of a change of feeling within himself,
I cannot exactly say. Certain it is, that his
tone was pitched several notes lower; indeed
he might be said to be at a much lower pitch
altogether, for scarcely a subject arose about
which he did not betray some apprehension.
If I could have supposed such a thing of the
man who had too much courage, I should
have said that Monsieur Jerome was afraid
of being in the dark. He excused La Maligne
for not going at her best pace— whatever that
was— on account of the ruts, the stones, the
general condition of the road. He invited
me, from time to time, to look out, and see if
anything was following or approaching, on
the ground that, possibly, my eyes were better
than his. When I informed him that I was
extremely short-sighted, and could hardly
see beyond his horse's ears, he gave way to
open lamentation.

The malle-poste, he said, or some other
furiously driven carriage, might come tearing
along and be down upon us before we knew
where we were; in fact, there was no saying
what might not happen, and really, unless
monsieur was particularly anxious to get on,
he thought it would be better for us to turn
back at once, and put up for the night at
Bernay. He would undertake to say that no
time should be lost by this arrangement.

Overlooking for the moment the cool
impudence of the proposition, I simply desired
him to get on as fast he could, and if he had
any doubts as to the safety of the road, to
keep them to himself; for, although they did
not affect me, they might make the lady
uncomfortable. Finding me inflexible on the
subject of retracing our steps, he made a
virtue of necessity, insulted La Maligne by
heaping upon her as many terms of opprobrium
as he could think of, and accompanied
those insults by a practical application of his
whip in a manner that must have been
anything but pleasant to the unhappy animal.
This mode of proceeding had the effect of
keeping up his spirits until we reached
Nampont, nine kilos further. Luckily
there was no possible excuse for stopping at
this village, immortalised, as we all remember,
by Sterne's Dead Ass; so we pushed on
for Montreuil, evidently our resting-place for
the night. To ourselves it was the most
hopeful part of the journey, as every moment
brought us nearer to our long-delayed dinner,
but that was not the case with Monsieur
Jerome. He had become the prey of far
worse apprehensions than the chance of being
run down in the dark, and did not hesitate to
communicate them to me when, having
wrapped up my wife in a large cloak, and
disposed her for a nap in the recesses of the
coucou, I took a seat in front by his side. I
believe I provoked the disclosure of his
thoughts, by asking him casually if there
were many wolves in that part of the country.
He replied that in winter they abounded,
particularly in a certain large wood called
the Bois Jean, which we should shortly come
to; but that he did not care for wolves, as
they only showed themselves in the depths of
winter, and luckily that season was gone by,
though he admitted, and, as it seemed to me,
in no very assured tone, that " those beasts
were very fond of horse-flesh, and might be
tempted by it at any time." He made a
pause after this dark allusion to the possible
fate of La Maligne, but presently added:

"After all, one might keep them off,
perhaps, with one's whip, or frighten them
away by shouting; but there are other
customers on this part of the road, sometimes,
not so easily got rid of."

I asked him what kind of customers he
meant? Not robbers, surely?

In a voice scarcely above a whisper, he
begged me to speak lower. That, in effect,
was it. There had been terrible doings in
that neighbourhood. At Verton, about half
a league off the high road on the left hand
side— we could see the place easily in the
day-time; he wished he saw it now— the
château had been broken into, the year before,
by a ferocious band, who, it was known, or
suspected, still haunted thereabouts. He
had heard that a garde champêtre had once
been murdered in the hollow there at l'Epine,
which, thank God! we had just passed. He
should not care a straw for a dozen robbers
at a time, if he could only see them, but
when they came upon you unawares——