Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/245

 been gone long when we plunged downwards into a deep and winding mountain gorge, the kind of cut-throat place where you'd expect brigands to grow on blackberry bushes. Oh, but it was dark, with only now and then a fitful gleam of moonlight cutting its way through a rent in the inky clouds! Hardly had the word "brigands" crept into my mind with an accompaniment of heart-beats something like the plink! plink! plink! villain entrance-music on the stage, when two indistinct forms loomed out of the blackness before us. A perpendicular wall of rock shot up from the road on one side, and on the other, in some unseen depth below, roared a torrent, which drowned my voice when I whispered to Brown, so I clutched his coat-sleeve instead of speaking.

The two men were chattering loudly in Italian. "Ah, Italian brigands, worse and worse!" thought I; but Brown said "Good-evening" to them boldly, and they answered as mildly as a pair of lambs, falling behind to let us pass on. I skipped along, expecting at any instant to feel a knife in my back, but the blade did not penetrate any part more vital than my imagination, though the pair hung on our footsteps till we emerged from the mountain defile into the town of Ollioules.

I never knew what an attractive object an electric tram could be, until I saw one there awaiting our convenience, glittering with hospitable light. We jumped in, and were flashed into Toulon in no time, stopping close to the best hotel. We found that they could accommodate our party, but Brown quite took the upper hand; wouldn't allow me to stop and