away with the wind." Another who was more frightened than hurt was the Jesuit Possevino, on his way to Muscovy. Tired out with a day on the main road thither from Poland, spent handling the axe to clear the road of vegetation, dragging the waggons by hand, sometimes carrying them on their shoulders, he and his lay down to sleep (in the rain) and were kept awake by Cossacks in among the trees imitating the sounds of wild beasts to terrify them. Pleasanter was it for those in Hungary, where the custom was, when strangers came in sight, to bake some bread fresh in the cinders that served as ovens, and send it to their lodgings by the youngest and prettiest girls, who gathered themselves into a ring and danced round the visitors singing. Yet another picture is of a Frenchman whose way lay through the Ardennes in time of war; he was journeying on business. Tales were plentiful of bands of peasants in the forests, killing passers-by without distinction. One evening he makes his escape from four men, takes a by-road where the highroad was in particularly bad repute; snow begins to fall, the wind is dead against him; his by-road leads him cross-country, which founders his horse; he sits down on a tree-trunk, back to the wind, and thinks how his brother and four sisters are providing him with nephews and nieces who will never give a guess at the troubles he has gone through in making a fortune, but will take it for granted that they are to have a share of it. The nephews, perhaps, would have told him that it was lucky for him he was in the Ardennes and not outside St. Malo at so late an hour, with the twelve or twenty-four, whichever it was,[116] savage English dogs waiting for him, who were sent out every night with their keeper to guard the town, "killing and tearing any living creature they encounter withal." In 1627 a man did die so. Even without the dogs, at St. Malo or anywhere else, it was troublesome, or worse, to arrive late. Gates were closed, and kept closed, and this applied, of course, to seafarers as well; one tourist making for Monaco, another for Genoa, had for that reason to sleep out in an open boat. In towns where a strict "Reformed" sect had the upper hand, this waiting might have to be done in daytime also; gates as well as shops being shut during sermon-time. But even supposing he found means to enter at night, it might be wiser not to take the offer, seeing that he would find himself wandering about in a pitch-dark maze of dirty alleys during the hours when it was permissible for the inhabitants to throw "slops" out of window. [Illustration: BENIGHTED 'SIGHT'-SEERS] CHAPTER VIII THE PURSE A traveller! by my faith, you have great reason to be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's. _As You Like It_ (about 1599).