'I am sure we should keep more to the right,'
says one; and the other is just as certain they should hold to the
left.
And now, suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain falls
'sheer and strong and loud,' as out of a shower-bath. In a moment
they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They cannot see out of
their eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their
boots. They leave the track and try across country with a
gambler's desperatin, for it seems as if it were impossible to make
the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from
boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than
rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and
broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the cannon in the
distance. And meantime the cannon grumble out responses to the
grumbling thunder. There is such a mixture of melodrama and sheer
discomfort about all this, it is at once so grey and so lurid, that
it is far more agreeable to read and write about by the chimney-
corner than to suffer in the person. At last they chance on the
right path, and make Franchard in the early evening, the sorriest
pair of wanderers that ever welcomed English ale. Thence, by the
Bois d'Hyver, the Ventes-Alexandre, and the Pins Brules, to the
clean hostelry, dry clothes, and dinner.
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