At a walk, at a trot, more often at a jaded amble, they pushed on behind Badelon's humped shoulders.

Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines.

Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what.
To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these.

On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage.

Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.
"We shall be at Lege by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M.le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset.