The Ambush

Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog,
with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in
her mind. The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with
greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and
battered resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse
broken by a few hills. These were little more than mounds, and for the
most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which
gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely. Weird
trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising
in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers
moved, weary phantoms in a clinging nightmare. At a walk, at a trot,
more often at a jaded amble, they pushed on behind Badelon's humped
shoulders. Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only
those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes
the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute
or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and
stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket
of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these
things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils
of a flight from they knew not what.

To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he
seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took
things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and
riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor
did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and
confirm Badelon in the way he was going.