Besides this, their gait was uneven, undecided, I might almost say spasmodical:  they did not keep step, although close side by side, for now one and now the other, as though goaded by a troublesome thought which he wished to avoid, would of a sudden quicken his pace and break into a hasty, feverish walk, or, contrarily, as though held back by the chain of some unhappy reflection, lag in his stride and draw his hand across his brow with a gesture of pain.

Each seemed so wrapped in the gloom of his own musings as to be unconscious of all around him, and I began to feel angry with myself for having intruded upon the privacy of this grief with my idle and silly chattering.  A feeling of remorse, too, sprang up in me as I remembered that for a moment I had accused these poor people of churlishness and set down the sensitiveness of their sorrow to a sulky rudeness.  There must be something very revolting to the feeling of our better nature in the sense of an injustice done even in thought, for I declare I felt for a minute as if I ought to confess my ideas to my companions and beg their pardon for having wronged them, though only in mind.  “Who knows,” I muttered, “what efforts it may have cost them to answer me with the composure they did? and am I sure that I myself, under similar circumstances, should have suffered with the same forbearance the company of a stranger, whose presence must have been both irksome and galling?”

Once it seemed to me that the two turned to gaze earnestly into each other’s eyes and then to clasp their hands in a quick nervous grasp, as though each hoped, by so doing, to take from the other a part of the sorrow they appeared to share in common.  Neither spoke, however, but the mute sympathetic touch was doubtless more eloquent than words.  Once again both stopped, at once and together, as if their minds, acting in unison and following the same strain, had arrived simultaneously at a point where rest and relief were needed.  The old man placed his hand upon the boy’s shoulder.  “Courage, Henri!” he said, and hastily walked on.

Tears rose to my eyes, but how or why I can scarcely tell, unless it be indeed that grief is contagious, and that the angel who hovers over those who mourn cannot bear to see a heart indifferent:  yes, tears started to my eyes, and pity with them.  The features of the two peasants became transformed for me:  they were no longer ugly and uninteresting:  how could they be so, brightened by the halo with which sympathy crowned them?

“Have you far to go, sir?” suddenly asked the old man, breaking in abruptly upon the course of my reflections.

“About a league,” I answered.

He made no reply, and we walked on again in silence, the rain continuing meanwhile to pour down in torrents, and the wind lashing itself by degrees into the fury of a hurricane.

After a few minutes we reached a spot where the road branched off in two directions:  my path lay to the right.  The wayfarers paused as though to take the left:  both looked at me.