to make for themselves, went uninterruptedly forward. Every day they
found something new to think about and undertake.

One day as they were walking together through the village, they had to
remark with dissatisfaction how far behind-hand it was in order and
cleanliness, compared to villages where the inhabitants were compelled
by the expense of building-ground to be careful about such things.

"You remember a wish we once expressed when we were traveling in
Switzerland together," said the Captain, "that we might have the laying
out of some country park, and how beautiful we would make it by
introducing into some village situated like this, not the Swiss style of
building, but the Swiss order and neatness which so much improve it."

"And how well it would answer here! The hill on which the castle stands,
slopes down to that projecting angle. The village, you see, is built in
a semicircle, regularly enough, just opposite to it. The brook runs
between. It is liable to floods; and do observe the way the people set
about protecting themselves from them; one with stones, another with
stakes; the next puts up a boarding, and a fourth tries beams and
planks; no one, of course, doing any good to another with his
arrangement, but only hurting himself and the rest too. And then there
is the road going along just in the clumsiest way possible,--up hill and
down, through the water, and over the stones. If the people would only
lay their hands to the business together, it would cost them nothing but
a little labor to run a semi-circular wall along here, take the road in
behind it, raising it to the level of the houses, and so give themselves
a fair open space in front, making the whole place clean, and getting
rid, once for all, in one good general work, of all their little
trifling ineffectual makeshifts."