Valley rose and stretched away into the distance a seemingly endless
succession of hills, broken up by narrow gorges and glens. Over all, or
nearly all these hills lay a dark and scarcely varying mantle of forest.
This tract of country is well named Perigord Noir. It is one of the few
districts of France which still draw a sum from the Government yearly in
the form of prize money for the wolves that are killed there.

I returned to St. Mondane and continued my journey westward by the valley,
which brought me every day a little nearer to the sea--still so far away.
As I had no need to hurry, I sat awhile in the late afternoon upon a low
mossy wall, in the deep shade of a dripping, whispering rock, from which
hung delicate green tresses of the maiden's-hair fern. Above, the rock was
lost in a steep wilderness of trees and dense undergrowth, which met the
radiant sky somewhere where the eye could not follow. The bell-like tinkle
of water out of sight was the only sound until I heard a patter-patter of
webbed feet coming along the road. A flock of geese were moving homeward,
followed by a woman, whose feet were as bare as theirs, and whose eyes were
fixed upon her distaff and spindle. She would not have noticed me had not
the birds, true to their ancient reputation, given the alarm.

A little later I had left the shadow of the wooded rocks and was on the
margin of the river, which spread out broadly here between its shelving
banks of pebbly shingle. Then, to reach by the shortest way the village
where I intended to pass the night, I had to turn once more from the water
and cross some wooded hills. Here the jays mocked at the solemnity of the
evergreen oaks, and the dark forest echoed as with the laughter of fiends.

Grolejac was the curious name of the village I was seeking, and which I at
length found partly on a hill and partly in the valley of the Dordogne.
Chance taking me to a house that bore the sign of an inn, although it