fir-trees, near which an old woman sat knitting in the cool shadow, while below her a brook dashed noisily over the brown stones beneath the fir trees.

The girl looked so picturesque standing in front of the cottage, that presently, when we met her in the village, we asked if she would stand for her portrait. She laughed, and said it was not the first time she had been asked to do this; and she certainly stood very well. She told us her name was Katharine Philippe, and that she lived at the café at the entrance of the village, a tiny but picturesque cottage, with a staircase coming down into the entrance, which was also the kitchen. Katharine told us that she lived there with her father and mother and sisters and brothers, and that they all worked hard for their living.

"We own some land-oh yes," she said; "but we are too poor to farm it ourselves, so we let it to others, who employ us to work upon it. Allez! I ought to be at work there now," she said, with a glance at the sun above the hill.

"Are you going to work on the hill in this heat?" I said.

Katharine looked at me with an amused smile.

"It makes no matter to me whether the sun is out or in," she said. "I have my bonnet," she touched

it. "I love the sun. I like all but the cold. Ah! Madame, but it is cold here in winter."

We were quite sorry to part from Katharine Philippe. She was not pretty, but she spoke well and intelligently, and looked thoroughly clean and honest. We could have lingered several days at Coo, sketching its pretty cottages and their surroundings; our hostess told us that the views from the tops of the hills were splendid; indeed, whichever way one turns there is beauty, either in the view opposite, where beyond the great hill a pleasant upland meadow shows beside the Amblève; or, turning one's back on this, the sight of the sweet village, nestling among its fruit and flowers, and the dark, swift stream, bordered by tall trees, that divides. it from the Inn of the Cascade.

After some trouble and bargaining we found we could get a one-horse carriage from the other inn to take us to Remouchamps, about nineteen miles, for eighteen francs. We were told that a small carriage would take us more quickly than a larger one with two horses, as the road was not good, and the hills were very steep for a heavy carriage.

We had heard much of the beauty of this drive, and indeed it was for this chiefly that we had come to Coo, ignorant of the great charm we should find in the little village.

wanderings of the gay and sparkling Amblève-the most coquettish of rivers-never going straight and quietly on its way, but either curving abruptly round the base of some projecting hill, as if it were hastening out of sight, or foaming over masses of gray stone which have fallen into its bed from the rocks above, or forming little cascades where some tributary brook comes hastening out of a dark gorge in the cliff on its farther bank.

When our vehicle appeared we found it was very

small for us and for our baggage. However, after a great deal of manoeuvring and cording, our traps were accommodated in various parts of the little carriage. As we leave the village, the sides of the gorge are purple in their depth of shadow, and a faint blue mist hangs over the little stream. The scene is very wild and picturesque here-far more beautiful than anything we had yet seen in the Ardennes. It would make a delightful walking journey to follow the Amblève from Trois-Ponts to Comblain-au-Pont, where it falls into the Ourthe, a distance of about twenty miles, with halting-places at Coo and at Remouchamps.

At some little distance from Coo the road parted. We kept to the left, and soon found ourselves in a beautiful little village built among fir trees on the slope of the hill on each side the way. We asked its name from a villager, and learned that it was La Gleize, and that from it there is a delightful walk to Coo, on the opposite bank of the Amblève.

Besides the fir trees, there were orchards full of fruit all round us; and among the fruit trees large whitewashed half-timbered houses, with thatched roofs of the same character we had seen before, the slope of the gable shallow on one side, and the other almost reaching the ground; these long slopes shelter stacks of brushwood

and faggots-there seemed everywhere to be piles of faggots. Up the side of one house was nailed a tall apricot tree, spreading its branches, laden with golden fruit and yellow-green leaves, over the white wall. We asked a rough-headed girl beside the house if the apricots were to be bought. She called out something in an incomprehensible jargon, which our driver interpreted into "Not ripe." This village of La Gleize looked idyllic ; no doubt on closer inspection there would be plenty of drawbacks to weaken its fascinations. Behind us was the lofty hill of Coo, and across it a range of darker hills; while beside us, on a lower level than the road and the village, was the dashing osier-bordered river.

We next passed a wood, in which our driver pointed out a chapel dedicated to St. Anne. The road now went on mounting, and we were among cornfields on a wide plateau overlooking green meadows in the river valley, which had widened considerably. On the opposite hill is the old château of Vaux Renard; and farther on, though nearer the river, are the white cottages of a village. The air was deliciously invigorating. We were on such high ground that, although the country was open, and the sun was shining hotly, we felt a delightful breeze. As we went on our horizon grew more and more extensive, and presently we came in