The most beautiful time for the forest is, of course, in the autumn.  October and November are lovely months, with the changing foliage, the red and yellow almost as vivid as in America, and always a foreground of moss and brown ferns, which grow very thick and high all through the forest.  We used to drive sometimes over a thick carpet of red and yellow leaves, hardly hearing the horses’ hoofs or the noise of the wheels, and when we turned our faces homeward toward the sunset there was really a glory of colour in wood and sky.  It was always curiously lonely—­we rarely met anything or anyone, occasionally a group of wood-cutters or boys exercising dogs and horses from the hunting-stables of Villers-Cotterets.  At long intervals we would come to a keeper’s lodge, standing quite alone in the middle of the forest, generally near a carrefour where several roads met.  There was always a small clearing—­garden and kennels, and a perfectly comfortable house, but it must be a lonely life for the women when their husbands are off all day on their rounds.  I asked one of them once, a pretty, smiling young woman who always came out when the carriage passed, with three or four children hanging to her skirts, if she was never afraid, being alone with small children and no possibility of help, if any drunkards or evilly disposed men came along.  She said no—­that tramps and vagabonds never came into the heart of the forest, and always kept clear of the keeper’s house, as they never knew where he and his gun might be.  She said she had had one awful night with a sick child.  She was alone in the house with two other small children, almost babies, while her husband had to walk several miles to get a doctor.  The long wait was terrible.  I got to know all the keepers’ wives on our side of the forest quite well, and it was always a great interest to them when we passed on horseback, so few women rode in that part of France in those days.

Sometimes, when we were in the heart of the forest, a stag with wide-spreading antlers would bound across the road; sometimes a pretty roebuck would come to the edge of the wood and gallop quickly back as we got near.

We had a nice couple at the lodge, an old cavalry soldier who had been for years coachman at the chateau and who had married a Scotchwoman, nurse of one of the children.  It was curious to see the tall, gaunt figure of the Scotchwoman, always dressed in a short linsey skirt, loose jacket, and white cap, in the midst of the chattering, excitable women of the village.  She looked so unlike them.  Our peasant women wear, too, a short; thick skirt, loose jacket, and worsted or knit stockings, but they all wear sabots and on their heads a turban made of bright-coloured cotton; the older women, of course—­the girls wear nothing on their heads.  They become bent and wrinkled very soon—­old women before their time—­having worked always in the fields and carried heavy burdens on their backs.  The Scotchwoman kept much to herself and rarely left the