One begins
to look at the other doubtfully. 'I am sure we should keep more to
the right,' says one; and the other is just as certain they should
hold to the left. And now, suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain
falls 'sheer and strong and loud,' as out of a shower-bath. In a
moment they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They cannot see out
of their eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in
their boots. They leave the track and try across country with a
gambler's desperatin, for it seems as if it were impossible to make
the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from
boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than
rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and
broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the cannon in the distance.
And meantime the cannon grumble out responses to the grumbling
thunder. There is such a mixture of melodrama and sheer discomfort
about all this, it is at once so grey and so lurid, that it is far
more agreeable to read and write about by the chimney-corner than to
suffer in the person. At last they chance on the right path, and
make Franchard in the early evening, the sorriest pair of wanderers
that ever welcomed English ale.
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