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There are the beautiful green woods fading to soft autumn brown and yellow the little red roofs in the trees, an empty village in the foreground you can see the wet mud shining in its street and the white trickle of water down the centre of the road. Down our long muddy hill-slope, near where the knuckles of it dip out of sight into the bottom of the valley, one notices a line of heads.
He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as upon a presentiment: he pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage deserted, the rose-garden wasted and full of tares, and the bleak wind blowing whither it listed through those avenues of beauty, for desolation possessed them all.
Even as I thought of him, I was within a few rods of the house where he was. I looked, and saw him standing in the doorway. I ran and called to him. He instantly joined me, and we ran on together: the fishermen shouting loudly as they watched the river-drivers come armed down the hill-slope into the village. I hastily explained the situation to my friend, and told him what we must do.
And here, on a thick-wooded hill-slope, the wanderers found a dry cave and made it their den. In due course the long-jawed bitch bore a litter of six sturdy whelps, which throve amazingly. As they grew up they showed almost all wolf, harking back to the type save that in colour they were nearly black, with a touch of tan in the gray of their under parts.
In the distance, over the waste lands, the shepherd Tringuesse was following his flock of sheep, which occasionally scattered over the fields, and then, under the dog's harassing watchfulness, reformed in a compact group, previous to descending the narrow hill-slope.
Then, with a cheer, they rushed forward with the bayonet, and wrestled in fierce hand-to-hand fight with our infantry for the guns, which were alternately taken and re-taken on either side, till the hill-slope was slippery with blood. "Our troop of dragoons was ordered to charge up the hill and re- capture the guns.
Consider how it must be in a hill-slope overgrown with stout-twigged, partly evergreen shrubs, more than man high, and as thick as a hedge. Not all the cañon's sifting of snow can fill the intricate spaces of the hill tangles. Here and there an overhanging rock, or a stiff arch of buckthorn, makes an opening to communicating rooms and runways deep under the snow.
He could not see where, beneath the snow, the land ended and the ice began; but it mattered little. He walked out on the white plain scanning the south-eastern hill-slope for the house toward which he intended to bend his steps.
The hurly-burly of sunrise had abated by this time, for wellnigh all the villagers were absent celebrating the day around their respective May-poles or at bear or bull-baiting. With his hands behind him, he walked soberly up and down for a few minutes, carefully surveying the pretty wooden houses, the church in the distance, and the stones of the churchyard on the green hill-slope beyond.
The journey was for the most part over a llano, thicket-covered and sprinkled, here and there, with groves of palm; the soil was dark clay, which in spots, wet by recent rains, was hard travelling for the animals. We caught sight of the town, prettily located upon a hill-slope, about an hour before we reached it.
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