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As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about to be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside his own projects and took up a good position to observe the start. The expedition consisted of 198 persons, including the mules; or 205, including the cows. As follows:

A swell in the Art patron line. Lost his heart at first sight. But evidently on closer acquaintance found her rather a handful, and too much of a Bohemian to suit his British taste! At all events there was a flare-up over something about three months ago, and Sir Roger backed out, politely but definitely. It seems that Miss Maurice was a good deal cut up. Went off to Zermatt with her brother.

We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad Visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our perils over and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received with the most lavish honors and applause.

The mountain climber makes a sad pilgrimage to the graves of three of them in Zermatt; the fourth probably fell in a crevasse of the glacier at the foot, and may be brought to the sight of friends in perhaps two score years, when the river of ice shall have moved down into the valleys where the sun has power to melt away the ice.

They tell me, Herr Baron, you left Zermatt on the sixth of July?" Bower's face had grown cold and gray while the old man was speaking. He began to understand. Stampa would spare him none of the horror of the tragedy from which he fled like a lost soul when the news of it reached the hotel. Well, he would not draw back now. If Stampa and he were destined to have a settlement, why defer it?

There is nothing tame, or cheap, or trivial it is all magnificent. That short valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator has hung it with His masterpieces. We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles; by pedometer seventy-two.

It was not in fact so imminent as I supposed, for the descent into Zermatt is somewhat too steep for the conduct of a necessarily delicate debate. Sound legs go down at a compulsory run, and my companion was continually waiting for me to catch her up, only to shoot ahead again perforce.

There might well be the group before the Monte Rosa Hotel in Zermatt which he himself had seen in Kenyon's rooms. Fortunately however, or so it seemed to him, Sylvia was engrossed in Michel's little book. The book indeed was of far more interest to her than the portrait of any mountaineer. It had a romance, a glamour of its own.

There were some fellows playing lawn-tennis at the hotel at Zermatt. One of them wasn't half bad. His serves twisted to the leg and were awfully hard to get up. Jim and I wouldn't have minded a game, only the fellows seemed to think no one wanted to play but themselves. We may get a game to-morrow on our way to the Matterhorn. It was a tremendous fag getting up here from Zermatt.

"You see, I have enough to go on with. In fact " and he looked northward toward the mountains. Dimly they could be seen under the sickle of a new moon. "In fact, I propose to-morrow to take your friend Simond and cross on the high-level to Zermatt." "But afterward?" asked Chayne. Garratt Skinner laughed and laughed like a boy. There was a rich anticipation of enjoyment in the sound. "Afterward?