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Jack stopped several times in the rock galleries of the Axenstrasse before we reached Flüelen; consequently it was evening when we slipped into little Altdorf, where Molly insisted on making a curtsey to the statue of Tell and his agreeable little boy.

From Brunnen, it was our plan to walk along the Axenstrasse, to Fluelen, a distance of five or six miles. There were three of us, with an elder for guide. I wish you could have spent that afternoon with us with me, strolling along that wonderful road, cut out of the mountain side bordering the lake.

Further on, she made us confide the car to Gotteland on the Axenstrasse, while we descended the path to Tell's chapel and did reverence to the hero's memory. On such a day as this must it have been that Tell leaped ashore from the boat, leaving Gessler to look after himself; for the blasts were shrieking down the lake, and the waves dashed their foam over the ledge where stands the chapel.

As she talked she made weak little gestures with her hands, and she thrust her face forward from her bent shoulders; and she peered sometimes at Ann Veronica and sometimes at a photograph of the Axenstrasse, near Fluelen, that hung upon the wall.

In places it reminds one of the Axenstrasse of Lake Lucerne, being cut in the side of the cliffs overhanging the sea, with here and there great masses of rock projecting over it; and passes occasionally through a tunnel cut in the stone.

About half way along Axenstrasse, we discovered that we were hungry, so we proposed to try one of the farm houses for something to eat. Our guide, tried one that looked typical of what we wanted, and the rest of us waited by the road, for fully thirty minutes. At last the elder returned, explaining that he had had no easy task.

There was no need to hurry, for we had the night before us, so we passed slowly, halting often, along the marvellous Axenstrasse, while Jack distilled into Molly's willing ears legends from the old heroic days of Switzerland, before it became the happy haven of hotel-keepers.

Where the mountains rise too precipitously, it is in some places impossible to construct a road along the edge; in these cases they pierce through the mountains for considerable distances. The Axenstrasse, along Lake Luzerne, has many such tunnels, one of which is about one eighth of a mile in length. In the Grimsel, the road avoids a water-fall by passing through a tunnel under it.