they clutched their distaffs, the few survivors?

Taking the road to Bugues, I passed a small church with an open belfry
with a tiled roof supported by wooden pillars. It stood in a grove of tall
cypresses and weeping willows, and the gravestones lay scattered round
about. The waning sunshine seemed to fall more tenderly here than upon the
open fields where the ruddy pumpkins flamed. It was nearly dark when I
reached the little town of Bugues.

[Illustration: TRUFFLE-HUNTERS.]




IN THE VALLEY OF THE VEZERE.


The spring has come again, and I am now at Les Eyzies, in the valley of the
Vezere: a paradise of exceptional richness to the scientific bone and flint
grubber on account of the very marked predilection shown for it by the men
of the Stone Age, polished and unpolished. It is about five in the morning,
and the woods along the cliffs are just beginning to catch the pale fire of
the rising sun. Just outside my open window are about twenty chickens in
the charge of two mother hens, and as they have not been long awake, they
do their utmost to make a noise in the world like other creatures that are
empty. As soon as the neighbour's door is open they enter in a body, and
march towards the kitchen. A female voice is heard to address something
sharply to them in patois; there is a scuffle in the passage, and all the
chickens scream together as they rush before the broom into the road. This
is how the village day opens.