The driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with the cracking
of his whip. He never seemed to go faster than a walk, yet it was
impossible to overtake him; and at length, at the comer of a hill,
the whole equipage disappeared bodily into the night. At the time,
people said it was the devil qui s'amusait a faire ca.
I suggested there was nothing more likely, as he must have some
amusement.
The foreman said it was odd, but there was less of that sort of
thing than formerly. 'C'est difficile,' he added, 'a expliquer.'
When we were well up on the moors and the Conductor was trying some
road-metal with the gauge -
'Hark!' said the foreman, 'do you hear nothing?'
We listened, and the wind, which was blowing chilly out of the
east, brought a faint, tangled jangling to our ears.
'It is the flocks of Vivarais,' said he.
For every summer, the flocks out of all Ardeche are brought up to
pasture on these grassy plateaux.
Here and there a little private flock was being tended by a girl,
one spinning with a distaff, another seated on a wall and intently
making lace. This last, when we addressed her, leaped up in a
panic and put out her arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a
distance, and it was some seconds before we could persuade her of
the honesty of our intentions.
The Conductor told me of another herdswoman from whom he had once
asked his road while he was yet new to the country, and who fled
from him, driving her beasts before her, until he had given up the
information in despair.
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