I turned an elbow of the road and strolled to a little bridge spanning a brook that I had noticed some minutes earlier in passing. Leaning over the parapet, I saw the water swell to a miniature pond as it approached the arch--a shallow ferry designed to cool the fetlocks of weary horses. The whole was a mirror of placidity. It flowed like a white oil, reflecting in intenser accent the fading vault above, so that one seemed to be looking down upon a subterranean dawn--and, “It is there and thus,” I murmured, “the little people begin their day.” There were rushes fringing the brook-edge, as I knew only by their sharp reversed pictures in the blanched water-glass, and a leaning stake in mid-stream repeated itself blackly that the hairy goblins below might have something to scratch themselves on; and then this fancy did so possess me that, when a bat dipt to the surface and rose again, its reality and not its shadow seemed to flee into the depths. At last a nightingale sang from a little copse hard by, completing my bewitchment--and so my thraldom to dreams was nearly made everlasting. For, it appeared, a man had come softly out of the woods behind me, while I hung over the parapet, and was stealing towards me on tiptoe with clubbed bludgeon. It was a stag-beetle that saved my life--whereout of might be snatched many little rags of reflections; for it shot whizzing and booming past my ear and startled me to a sudden sideway jump. The fellow was almost on my back at the moment, and could not check his impetus. He came crack against the low wall, his club span out of his fist, and he himself clutched, failed, and went over with a mighty splash into the water underneath. The ludicrous _dénoûment_ gave me time to collect my faculties. I was at no loss for an immediate solution of the incident. The highways, in these glorious days of fraternity, were infested with footpads, and no farther than five miles out of Paris we had had trouble with them. Doubtless this rascal, the carriage being out of sight, had taken me for a solitary pedestrian. I looked over the parapet, feeling myself master of the situation, though I had no weapon upon me. My assailant was gathering his long limbs together in the shallow pool. The water dragged the hair over his eyes and ran in a stream from his bristling chin. Suddenly he saw, drew a pistol, and clicked it at me. It was a futile and desperate action, and calculated only to confirm my estimate of his character. “_Ventrebleu_ and the devil!” he shouted. “Make way for me, sir.” I waved my hand, right and left of the ferry. Should he emerge either way, I could easily forestall him. “You have your choice of roads,” I said, politely. He recognised his difficulty, and turned as if to wade up stream and escape by the fields. His fourth step brought him into deep water, out of which he floundered snorting. “Try under the bridge,” I said. “It is the right passage for rats.” He cursed me volubly.