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Though the hut was a crude thing, a triumph of essentials over luxuries, Helen had never before hailed four walls and a roof with such heartfelt, if silent, thanksgiving. She sank exhausted on a rough bench, and watched the matter-of-fact Engadiners unpacking the stores and firewood carried in their rucksacks. Their businesslike air supplied the tonic she needed.
But, though politically severed from the Valtelline, the Engadiners and Davosers have not dropped their old habit of importing its best produce. What they formerly levied as masters, they now acquire by purchase. The Italian revenue derives a large profit from the frontier dues paid at the gate between Tirano and Poschiavo on the Bernina road.
Here, in the valley, matters were normal. The snow did not place such a veil on all things. The windings of the road often brought them abreast of the four men in the rear. Bower was trudging along alone, holding his head down, and seemingly lost in thought. Close behind him came Stampa and the Engadiners.
Helen was seated in a shady corner. A flood of sunlight filled the glass covered veranda with a grateful warmth. She had picked up an astonishingly well written and scholarly guide book issued by the proprietors of the hotel, and was deep in its opening treatise on the history and racial characteristics of the Engadiners, when she was surprised at hearing herself addressed by name.
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