They turned into the crossroad; the way became frightfully bad; the cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said to the postilion:—
“Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee.”
In one of the jolts, the whiffletree broke.
“There’s the whiffletree broken, sir,” said the postilion; “I don’t know how to harness my horse now; this road is very bad at night; if you wish to return and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early tomorrow morning.”
He replied, “Have you a bit of rope and a knife?”
“Yes, sir.”
He cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffletree of it.
This caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again at a gallop.
The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the hills and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish gleams in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea produced a sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of someone moving furniture; everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror. How many things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!
He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before; he vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain in the neighborhood of Digne, eight years previously, and it seemed but yesterday.
The hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:—
“What time is it?”