Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/238

222 cartloads of oranges which we passed opportunely looked warm and attractive, giving a delusive suggestion of the south to our road.

It was gipsy-land, too, for we met several tramping families: boldly handsome women, tall, dark men and boys with eagle eyes, and big silver buttons so well cared for they must have been precious heirlooms. "'Steal all you can, and keep your buttons bright,' is a gipsy father's advice to his son," said Jack Dane, as we wormed up the road toward a pass where the brown mountains seemed to open a narrow, mysterious doorway. So, fold upon fold shut us in, as if we had entered a vast maze from which we might never find our way out; and soon there was no trace of man's work anywhere, except the zigzag lines of road which, as we glanced up or down, looked like thin, pale brown string tied as a child ties a "cat's-cradle." We were in the ancient fastnesses of the Camisards; and this world of dark rock under clouding sky was so stern, so wildly impressive, that it seemed a country hewn especially for religious martyrs, a last stand for such men as fought and died praying, calling themselves "enfants de Dieu." Bending out from the front seat of the motor, my gaze plunged far down into the beds of foaming rivers, or soared far up to the dazzling white world of snow and steely sky toward which we steadily forged on. Oh, there was no hope of hiding the snow now from those whom it might concern! But Lady Tumour still believed, perhaps, that we should avoid it.

The higher the Aigle rose, climbing the wonderful road of snakelike twistings and turnings above sheer precipices,