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222 olive-gardens and fruit-orchards, cool with the running waters of the old stone conduits, and then by the verge of woody gorges, the cleft and rocky sides of the road sparkling with mica, or coloured with masses of red sandstone, pierced here and there with a vein of marble or spar. Cannes lay below and behind them, only seen by glimpses at the turnings through the moving foliage, with the islands of Lérins, St. Marguerite, and St. Honorat, working round to the west, the white-walled houses shining in the stream of sunlight.

They mounted in silence, till suddenly the driver turned in his seat to point across the flat, low-lying plain before them to the west. It stretched, ruddy and monotonous, back from the blue semi-circle of the bay to the line of serrated hills that shut out the horizon. Rectilineal lines of plane-trees, geometric avenues, hedged about the environs of a village.

'That is Bocca, monsieur,' he said to Wilson; 'and those hills are the Estrel and the Paveron.'

Wilson acknowledged the value and interest of the information, and the driver once more gave himself up to the onomatopoeic encouragement of his nags. Randal had for some time said nothing; for the volumes of the free fresh air dilating his lungs were giving him considerable physical pleasure, and pleasure (more especially his own) was one of the