Well, now, these men were pleased to see in autumn grass growing between the setts of the street, especially in one steep street where they lived. It rejoiced their hearts; they said within themselves, “This is indeed an Old Town!” But the Town Council of that town had said among themselves, “What if it become publicly known that grass grows in our streets? We shall be thought backward; the rich will not come to visit us. We shall not make so much money, and our brothers-in-law and others indebted to us will also grow impoverished. Come! Let us pull up this grass.” So they paid a poor man, who would otherwise have starved, the amount of his food on the condition that he should painfully pull up all the grass, which he did. Then the artists, seeing him at work, paid him more not to pull it up. Then the Town Council, finding out this, dismissed him from their employ, and put upon the job a distant man from some outlandish county, and had him watched, and he pulled up all the grass, every blade of it, by night, but thoroughly. The next morning the artists saw what had been done, and they went out by train to another town, and bought grass seed and also a little garden soil, and the next night they scattered the soil carefully between the stones and sowed the grass seed; and the comedy is not yet ended. There is a moral to this, but I will not write it down, for in the first place it may not be a good moral, and in the second place I have forgotten what it was. A Crossing of the Hills When it was nearly noon my companion said to me: “By what sign or track do you propose to cross the mountains?” For the mountains here seem higher than any of highest clouds: the valley beneath them is broad and full of fields: beyond, a long day off, stands in a huge white wall the Sierra del Cadi. Yet we must cross these hills if ever we were to see the secluded and little-known Andorrans. For the Andorrans live in a sort of cup fenced in on every side by the Pyrenees; it was on this account that my companion asked me how I would cross over to their land and by what sign I should find my way. When I had thought a little I answered: “By none. I propose to go right up at them, and over unless I find some accident by which I am debarred.” “Why, then,” said he, “let us strike up at once, walking steeply until we come into a new country.” This advice was good, and so, though we had no longer any path, and though a mist fell upon us, we began walking upwards, and it was like going up a moor in the West Riding, except that it went on and on and on, hour after hour, and was so steep that now and then one had to use one’s hands.