whisperings, grim chuckles, horrible gurgles, that told of subterranean
streams in spate, coursing in darkness to destinations unknown,
unguessable.

His path (there was no trace of road) ran snakily through a dense
miniature forest of dwarfed, gnarled pines, of a peculiarly sombre
green, ever and again in some scant clearing losing itself in a web of
similar paths that converged from all points of the compass; so that
the wayfarer was fain to steer by the sun--and at one time found
himself abruptly on the brink of a ravine that gashed the earth like a
cruel wound. He worked his way to an elevation which showed him plainly
that--unless by a debatable detour of several miles--there was no way
to the farther side but through the depths of the ravine itself.

If that descent was a desperate business, the subsequent climb was
heartbreaking. He needed a long rest before he was able to plod on, now
conceiving the sun in the guise of a personal enemy. The sweat that
streamed from his face was brine upon his lips. For hours it was thus
with Duchemin, and in all that time he met never a soul. Once he saw
from a distance a lonely château overhanging another ravine; but it was
apparently only one more of the many ruins indigenous to that land, and
he took no step toward closer acquaintance.

Long after noon, sheer fool's luck led him to a hamlet whose mean
auberge served him bread and cheese with a wine singularly thin and
acid. Here he enquired for a guide, but the one able-bodied man in
evidence, a hulking, surly animal, on learning that Duchemin wished to
visit Montpellier-le-Vieux, refused with a growl to have anything to do
with him. Several times during the course of luncheon he caught the
fellow eyeing him strangely, he thought, from a window of the auberge.