Miss Blunt couldn’t defy them either, so, as it was getting near luncheon-time besides, we retraced our steps, but had not gone very far before we suffered a severe disappointment.  Some fifty yards below us in the path stood a seeming counterpart of “Madge Wildfire”; a wild, weird, wizened looking creature, whom we immediately recognised as a “witch of the hills.”  Her hair unkempt, her bodice hanging in tatters from her shoulders, her patched and threadbare petticoat barely fastened round what should have been her waist (and a waste it was) by a hook and eye held by a few threads—­even such as this, up the path she came.  But what a miserable failure she was!  When she came close to us, instead of pouring out a torrent of mad words, telling of her woes and wrongs, or at any rate breaking into a disgusting whine such as

  “Oh, gentles, I am mad and old,
  My dress is worn and thin;
  Oh, give me one small piece of gold! 
  To clothe my wretched skin;”

she didn’t even offer to tell our fortunes, but passed timidly by.  It was enough to have disappointed a saint! and we were only restored to a pleasant frame of mind by finding Mr. Sydney at the hotel on our return.

[Illustration]

In the afternoon we took the other path—­previously mentioned as branching off below the bridge over the Gave d’Azun,—­which leading sharply to the right, passes beside the river for a short distance, and then leads among the fields, finally—­like others in Argeles—­ losing itself there.  Just as the poplars which run with it ceased, we had a lovely view up a dip between two fertile hills, to the snow-peaks near Bareges; a narrow path skirts the side of the hill, on the right, in the direction of the morning’s sketching ground, but this we did not take, making, instead, for the hill standing immediately above the river.  Up this a certain distance we clambered—­scaring a few large green lizards that were sunning themselves on the stones,—­by a sheep track we managed to discover, till we could look down on a mass of tangled brushwood by the riverside.  Scrambling down to this through the wild vines and briars, we succeeded, after many fruitless attempts, in gaining the water’s edge.  There was no place to cross and the current was far too swift to attempt jumping, so we had to turn back.  While deliberating on the right path, a little girl, looking very wretched, with blurred face and torn clothes, came round a corner, and asked us if we had seen a lamb anywhere.  We were sorry we hadn’t, very sorry indeed; all we could do was to endeavour to recollect a rhyme and adapt it to her case, that we learnt in the nursery when we were something under fifteen, and, although it didn’t seem to assuage her grief much—­probably because she didn’t understand a word of English—­we think it ought to be quoted in case it should be useful to others.

JEANNETTE’S LAMB.

Jeannette had a naughty lamb,
That looked like dirty snow;
And wherever Jeannette went
That lamb would never go.