“Touch then!”

They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.

“No dinner?”

“Nothing but supper now,” said the mender of roads, with a

hungry face.

“It is the fashion,” growled the man. “I meet no dinner

anywhere.”

He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and

steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held

it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger

and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.

“Touch then.” It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it

this time, after observing these operations. They again joined

hands.

“Tonight?” said the mender of roads.

“Tonight,” said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.

“Where?”

“Here.”

He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking

silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like

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a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the

village.

“Show me!” said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the

hill.

“See!” returned the mender of roads, with extended finger.

“You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the

fountain”

“To the Devil with all that!” interrupted the other, rolling his

eye over the landscape. “I go through no streets and pas