Once, high up on the ridge of a valley, I saw a poor wretch, his arms bound behind him, hurrying forward under escort of a guard. It was evening, soft and tranquil. A cluster of mountain-peaks swam in the long distance; the horizon was barred with a grate of glowing clouds. Therethrough, it seemed, the consumed sun had fallen into white ashes of mist; but the cooling furnace of the sky, to the walls of which a single star clung like an unextinguished spark, was yet rosy with heat; and against the rose the hillside and the figures that crowned it were silhouetted in a sharp deep purple. How beautiful and how voiceless! The figure fell, and his scream came down to me like a bat’s cheep as the soldiers prodded him to rise with their bayonets. Then I cursed the Goths that had spoiled me my picture. Another time, lying concealed in a little hanging copse above a gorge, I heard bleating below me and the rainy patter of feet, and peered forth to see a flock of goats being driven down the valley. They were shepherded by three or four ‘requisition’ men, as they were called--patriot louts whose business it was to beat up the desolated country for those herds of sheep or swine that had run wild for lack of owners. Their unexpected appearance was a little lesson in caution to me, for I had enjoyed so long an immunity from interference as to have grown careless of showing myself in the most exposed districts. On two occasions only was I troubled by wolves. The first was on a morning of lassitude and fatigue, when water had failed me for many hours. I was resting, on a heath-covered slope, within a rocky cave or lair in the hillside. For long the sky wraiths had been loading cloud upon cloud, till the gathered steam of the earth, finding no outlet, seemed to scald one’s body. Then, in a moment, such a storm crashed down as I had never before experienced. Each slam of thunder amongst the rocks was like a port of hell flung open; the lightning, slashing through the hail, seemed to melt and run in a marrowy-white flood that palpitated as it settled down on the heather. But the hail! the fury of this artillery of ice--its noise, and the frenzy of the Carmagnole it danced! I was fortunate to be under a solid roof; and when at last the north wind, bristling with blades, charged down the valley like the Duke of Saxony’s Horse at Fontenoy, I thought the earth must have slipped its course and swerved into everlasting winter. Suddenly the mouth of the _ressui_ was blotted by a couple of shaggy forms. They came pelting up--their tails hooked like carriage-brakes to their bellies, their eyes blazing fear--and, seeing me within, jerked to a rigid halt, while the stones drummed on their hides. The next moment, cowed out of all considerations of caste, they had slunk by me and were huddled, my very sinister familiars, at the extreme end of the cave.