so hopeless, that a sudden lift of the mist revealed the unpleasant fact
that considerable progress had been made in a westerly direction, the
true line being north-west. Instead of the rocks of La Genollière, the
foreground presented was the base of the Dôle, and the chasm which
affords a passage from the well-known fortress of Les Rousses into Vaud.
There was nothing for it but to turn in the right direction, or attempt
to do so, and force a way through the wet woods till something should
turn up. This something took the form of a châlet; but no amount of
hammering and shouting produced any response, and it was only after a
forcible entrance, and a prolonged course of interior shouting, that a
man was at length drawn. He said that he had been asleep--and why he
put it in a past tense is still a mystery--and could give no idea of
the direction of the châlet on La Genollière, beyond a vague suggestion
that it was somewhere in the mist; a suggestion by no means improbable,
seeing that the mist was ubiquitous. One piece of information he was
able to give, and it was consoling: I was now, it seemed, on the
Fruitière de Nyon, and therefore the desired châlet could not be far
off, if only a guide could be found. On the whole, he thought that a
guide could not be found; but there were men in the châlet, and I might
go up the ladder with him and see what could be done. He led to a
chamber with a window of one small pane, dating apparently from the
first invention of glass, and never cleaned since. An invisible corner
of the room was appealed to; but the voice which resided there, and
seemed like everything else to be asleep, pleaded dreamily a total
ignorance of the whereabouts of the châlet in question. Just as, by dint
of steady staring through the darkness, an indistinct form of a
mattress, with a human being reclining thereon, began to be visible,
another dark corner announced that this new speaker had heard of a
_p'tit sentier_ leading to the châlet, but knew neither direction nor
distance. Here the space between the two corners put in a word; and, as