The big, lumbering forms crowded so closely round us in the twilight shadows, that now and then, to force a passage, Joseph was obliged to pull a slowly whisking tail, resembling almost exactly an old-fashioned bell-rope. Presently we had made our way past the herd, which was shut from our sight by the curtain of evening, though up on the mountain-tops it was still golden day. "There," said Joseph, pointing, "is the Cantine de Proz." [Illustration] CHAPTER X The Scraping of Acquaintance "You shall be treated to . . . ironical smiles and mockings." --WALT WHITMAN. "Up the hillside yonder, through the morning." --ROBERT BROWNING. I saw, standing desolate in the basin of mountains, an old house of grey stone, very square, very plain, very resolute and staunch of physiognomy. The windows were still unlighted, and it looked a gloomy home for months of winter cold and snow. Suddenly, as we approached, rather wearily now, a yellow gleam flashed out in an upper window. "That is the spare room for strangers," said Joseph, and I thought that there was a note of anxiety in his voice. "Perhaps someone has arrived before us," I remarked. "I hadn't thought of that, as you said so few people ever stopped at the Cantine over night." "Had you noticed, Monsieur, that after all we never passed the party with the donkeys?" asked my muleteer. "I had forgotten them." "I had not, but it was Monsieur's pleasure to go slowly; to stop for the views, to look at the ruined torts, and to trace the old road. We gave them time to get far ahead. I was always watching, but never saw them. The _ânes_ had more endurance than I thought, and as for that Innocentina, she is a daughter of Satan; she would know no fatigue." "It would be like that little brat to gobble up the one spare room of the Cantine as he did the one chicken of the 'Déjeûner,'" I muttered. "But we shall see what we shall see." We went on more rapidly, and soon arrived at the bottom of a steep flight of stone steps which led up to the door of the Cantine. A man came forward to greet us--a fine fellow, with the frank and lofty bearing of one whose life is passed in high altitudes. "Can we have supper and accommodation for the night at your house?" I asked. "Supper, most certainly, and with pleasure," came the courteous answer, "though we have only plain fare to offer. But the one spare room we have for our occasional guests, has just been taken by a young English or American gentleman. The woman who drives the two donkeys with which they travel, will have a bed in the room of my sister, and we could find sleeping place of a sort for your muleteer; but I fear we have no way of making Monsieur comfortable." I was filled with rage against the wretch who had robbed me of a decent meal, and would now filch from me a night's rest.