The Argosy — page 339: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

318 Fair Normandy. and wondered whether he had always been a maker and mender of shoes. But we had no time to enter into the past ; it would probably have been opening the flood-gates of a mighty torrent of recollections. This we would reserve for some possible future visit to Dreux. But we did venture upon a personal remark. “You seem aged for that sort of work,” we observed. ‘It is almost time you rested from your labours.” “The rest will come soon enough,” he replied, with a smile and a dreamy look. ‘“‘I am eighty-eight years old. People talk of their jubilee, but I have been at my work for seventy-five years. And I have never known want of work ; have never had to beg or borrow ; Heaven has been good to me. When I can work no longer [I shall know that the rest has cOme. It will then be time to put away, and sing the vesper hymn of my life.” We somehow felt rebuked. Here was so much faith and grati- tude; so much contentment with so little to satisfy it. It wasa lesson learned by the wayside, and was worth the learning. We left him to his work, his lamp, his recollections, and went on our way. ‘The houses grew fewer, the road darker. Presently we entered a grove of trees, sombre and mysterious. Utter silence reigned. We were beyond the reach of the harmonious blacksmith ; and Dreux, now quite far off, was too quiet a town to send forth the rush and roar of life indulged in by greater cities. It was too dark even for shadows. Not a breath of air stirred the branches of the straight trees so thickly planted together. Everything, even the voices of nature, seemed buried in profound slumber. If there were ghosts lurking about, it was too dark to see them. Perhaps this very grove had been haunted by Druids in the days gone by, and ¢hezr shades might have been flitting about it now; holding revelry amongst the trees, or waiting to show themselves to such wayfarers as had the gift of second sight. Evidently we had not the gift, forwe saw none. But we distinctly felt their influence. The moment we entered the grove we fell under a spell ; a strange impression took possession of us ;a cold and creepy feeling ; a sense of the presence of the mysterious, the supernatural, the invisible to mortal eye. Here, certainly, Druids must have worshipped, and we tried to find traces of the strange menhirs they have left behind them. We saw nothing, and presently we passed out of the grove and the uncanny influence. The pure, dark sky of heaven was above us. The stars flashed and scintillated. We were at the end of our pil grimage. Great gates, closed and barred, stood before us. To be or not to be? Should we conquer the dragon ? In the darkness we had to grope for the bell ; we could not see it. We found it; and a peal went forth upon the night air and awoke the echoes of the mysterious grove. Silence. Then suddenly, uprising | like a Jack-in-the-box, and inspiring us almost with terror, a figure Gomichbooks.com |