Page 118 - les-miserables

blowing. By the light of the expiring day the stranger per-
ceived, in one of the gardens which bordered the street, a
sort of hut, which seemed to him to be built of sods. He
climbed over the wooden fence resolutely, and found him-
self in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted
of a very low and narrow aperture, and it resembled those
buildings which road-laborers construct for themselves
along the roads. He thought without doubt, that it was, in
fact, the dwelling of a road-laborer; he was suffering from
cold and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter from the
cold. This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night.
He threw himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut.
It was warm there, and he found a tolerably good bed of
straw. He lay, for a moment, stretched out on this bed, with-
out the power to make a movement, so fatigued was he.
Then, as the knapsack on his back was in his way, and as
it furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand, he set
about unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment, a fe-
rocious growl became audible. He raised his eyes. The head
of an enormous dog was outlined in the darkness at the en-
trance of the hut.
It was a dog’s kennel.
He was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed him-
self with his staff, made a shield of his knapsack, and made
his way out of the kennel in the best way he could, not with-
out enlarging the rents in his rags.
He left the garden in the same manner, but backwards,
being obliged, in order to keep the dog respectful, to have
recourse to that manoeuvre with his stick which masters in

118 Les Miserables