The position, therefore, was not without its discomforts. I had
taken care to choose a servant who was familiar with the country,
but his knowledge seemed now at fault. However, under his
direction we retraced our steps, but still without regaining the
road; and as a small rain presently began to fall and the day to
decline, the landscape which in the morning had flaunted a wild
and rugged beauty, changed to a brown and dreary waste set here
and there with ghost-like stones. Once astray on this, we found
our path beset with sloughs and morasses; among which we saw
every prospect of passing the night, when La Font espied at a
little distance a wind-swept wood that, clothing a low shoulder
of the moor, promised at least a change and shelter. We made
towards it, and discovered not only all that we had expected to
see, but a path and a guide.

The latter was as much surprised to see us as we to see her, for
when we came upon her she was sitting on the bank beside the path
weeping bitterly. On hearing us, however, she sprang up and
discovered the form of a young girl, bare-foot and bareheaded,
wearing only a short ragged frock of homespun. Nevertheless, her
face was neither stupid nor uncomely; and though, at the first
alarm, supposing us to be either robbers or hobgoblins--of which
last the people of that country are peculiarly fearful--she made
as if she would escape across the moor, she stopped as soon as
she heard my voice. I asked her gently where we were.

At first she did not understand, but the servant who had played
the guide so ill, speaking to her in the PATOIS of the country,
she answered that we were near St. Brieuc, a hamlet not far from
Bottitort, and considerably off our road. Asked how far it was