CHAPTER XVII.

There had been very little said between Michel Voss and Urmand on their journey towards Granpere till they were at the top of the Vosges, on the mountain road, at which place they had to leave their little carriage and bait their horse.  Indeed Michel had been asleep during almost the entire time.  On the night but one before he had not been in bed at all, having reached Basle after midnight, and having passed the hours ’twixt that and his morning visit to Urmand’s house in his futile endeavours to stop poor Marie’s letter.  And the departure of the travellers from Basle on this morning had been very early, so that the poor innkeeper had been robbed of his proper allowance of natural rest.  He had slept soundly in the train to Colmar, and had afterwards slept in the little caleche which had taken them to the top of the mountain.  Urmand had sat silent by his side,—­by no means anxious to disturb his companion, because he had no determined plan ready to communicate.  Once or twice before he reached Colmar he had thought that he would go back again.  He had been, he felt, badly treated; and, though he was very fond of Marie, it would be better for him perhaps to wash his hands of the whole affair.  He was so thinking the whole way to Colmar.  But he was afraid of Michel Voss, and when they got out upon the platform there, he had no resolution ready to be declared as fixed.  Then they had hired the little carriage, and Michel Voss had slept again.  He had slept all through Munster, and up the steep mountain, and was not thoroughly awake till they were summoned to get out at the wonderfully fine house for refreshment which the late Emperor caused to be built at the top of the hill.  Here they went into the restaurant, and as Michel Voss was known to the man who kept it, he ordered a bottle of wine.  ’What a terrible place to live in all the winter!’ he said, as he looked down through the window right into the deep valley below.  From the spot on which the house is built you can see all the broken wooded ground of the steep descent, and then the broad plain that stretches away to the valley of the Rhine.  ‘There is nothing but snow here after Christmas,’ continued Michel, ’and perhaps not a Christian over the road for days together.  I shouldn’t like it, I know.  It may be all very well just now.’

But Adrian Urmand was altogether inattentive either to the scenery now before him, or to the prospect of the mountain innkeeper’s winter life.  He knew that two hours and a half would take them down the mountain into Granpere, and that when there, it would be at once necessary that he should begin a task the idea of which was by no means pleasant to him.  He was quite sure now that he wished he had remained at Basle, and that he had accepted Marie’s letter as final.  He told himself again and again that he could not make her marry him if she chose to change her mind.  What was he