The Road Was More Haphazard, Less Carefully
Tended, And Evidently Less Used.
The milestones were very old, and
marked leagues instead of kilometres.
There was age in everything.
Moss grew along the walls, and it was very quiet under the high trees.
I did not know the name of the little river that went slowly through
the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French
neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as
hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds
and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the
Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far off, meant once 'Slow
Water'.
I was wondering what its name might be, and how far I stood from
Porrentruy (which I knew to be close by), when I saw a tunnel across
the valley, and I guessed by the trend of the higher hills that the
river was about to make a very sharp angle. Both these signs, I had
been told, meant that I was quite close to the town; so I took a short
cut up through the forest over a spur of hill - a short cut most
legitimate, because it was trodden and very manifestly used - and I
walked up and then on a level for a mile, along a lane of the woods
and beneath small, dripping trees. When this short silence of the
forest was over, I saw an excellent sight.
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