Explore "Noemi" by Sabine Baring-Gould on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
JEAN DEL' PEYRA was riding home, a distance of some fifteen miles from La Roque Gageac. His way led through forests of oak clothing the slopes and plateau of chalk. The road was bad -- to be more exact, there was no road; there was but a track.
In times of civil broil, when the roads were beset by brigands, travellers formed or found ways for themselves through the bush, over the waste land, away from the old and neglected arteries of traffic. The highways were no longer kept up -- there was no one to maintain them in repair, and if they were sound no one would travel on them who could avoid them by a detour, when exposed to be waylaid, plundered, carried off to a dungeon, and put to ransom.