belonged to a priory. Little is left of the adjoining monastery except some
subterranean vaults and the gaping oven of the ruined bakery; all ferny,
mossy, given up to the faun and the dryad. The upper masonry was carried
away years ago to build a chapel upon the hill. A bit of green slope, where
the sunbeams wantoned with yellow mulleins, wild carrot, and bracken, was
the cemetery, as a few stone crosses almost buried in the soil plainly
told. These crosses doubtless mark the graves of nameless priors. And the
dust of the humble monk and serving brother, where is that? Every plant
draws from it something that it needs to fulfil its purpose. It is as good
for the nightshade as for the violet; flowers that are rank and deadly, and
others that are sweet and innocent, strive for the right of clasping with
their hungry roots the dust of men.

The innkeeper's sons left me by an abandoned mill on the other side of the
stream, which was crossed by a rough wooden bridge. Ascending the opposite
hill by a narrow path in the shadow of chestnuts and beeches, and fringed
with gorse and heather, I passed another deserted house, the roof of which
had fallen in. The gorge was getting very shadowy when I reached the
tableland above it. I saw the small town of Laplau in the plain away to
the left, but my path did not lie through it, for I preferred the wilder
country towards La Page. When I passed a little lake in a hollow, half
surrounded by firs, the slanting rays were diving into its liquid
stillness, over which the motionless trees bent gazing at their likeness.

When the sun left me I was upon a hilly waste, amid darkening bushes
of holly and juniper, tall bracken, heather, and gorse. The spirit of
desolation threw out broad wings under the fading sky; but from afar
towards the west, whither I was going, came through the dusk the shine and
twinkle of many fires that had been lighted by the peasants upon their
patches of reclaimed desert. They flashed to me the sentiment of the autumn