CHAPTER XIII.
The Restaurant at Le Trooz.
The train disappeared, and our forlorn little Madelon remained
standing alone on the platform. Forlorn, indeed! It was
raining hard now, a thick, persistent drizzle, through which
everything looked dim and blurred, and which was almost as
dense as the low-hanging mists that hid the tops of the hills.
Madelon stood still and shivered for a minute, clutching her
little bundle under her cloak, and trying to collect her
ideas.
Not a hundred yards off was the village, lying between the
hills in the next valley to Chaudfontaine, and not more than
three miles from that place, but shut out from it by a barrier
of rocky, wooded hill, round which there was only just space
for the road and stream to wind; an amphibious little village,
half in and half out of the water apparently, for it stood
just where the stream spread out in wide shallows, round low
islands, on and amongst which the houses were clustered and
scattered. Madelon instinctively turned towards it; she had
the very vaguest idea in her poor, bewildered little brain as
to where she was, or what she was going to do, only one thing
obvious in the surrounding uncertainties--that she could not
remain standing on the platform in the pouring rain.
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