in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that
early hour, amid all the travail of nature's growth, there was a hum of
vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent
effort. But the Abbe failed to comprehend the ardour of nature's painful
labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon
leant against the other side of the door.

The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by a
wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few
patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields
with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines
of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some
huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests
over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and
leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here
and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The
landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying
of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.

The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,