for himself-and he felt himself no coward.

Suddenly, through the plash of the waterfall, he heard voices below. Looking over the parapet, his eye met the figures of a party of travellers standing on the bridge far beneath at the base of the rocks. They could not see him for the spray. He only saw oneIanthe Lee.

Her rare, ever welcome face looked up at him from under a dark-spreading picturesque sombrero hat. The breeze played with her loosened curls; her eyes, even from here, it seemed to him he could see their light. The mountain air had heightened her colour, and the guides and her father were involuntarily dividing their admiration between her and the waterfall.

On Tony the impression was indescribable. Something like the shock of waking from what was worse than the deadliest dreamfirst sudden, then a long thrill of relief so intense as to be absolutely painful.

He leaned over and continued to watch them while they lingered below. When they moved away and he heard the voices of the party mounting the hill, he made his way to the edge of the wood, which he reached in time to catch one more glimpse of the travellers. Mr. Lee was on foot, his daughter riding. They were not stopping at Handeck, intending evidently to push on that same night to the Grimsel. Tony they had not seen, as he stood half-hidden by the trees. He would not come forward. He felt bewildered and dizzy everything before him, his own self, seemed strange and unreal. When the figures had disappeared he flung himself on his back on the grass in the wood, staring upwards through the black fir boughs into the blue sky above.

An extraordinary, unaccountable

revulsion of feeling had come over him. His nerves were in that overstrung condition, when every impression is magnified to the utmost in its intensity and in power of rapid working. He was well awake now, but felt like a man who has barely escaped some nameless danger, and shudders instinctively, even when safe, at the peril he has passed.

Something had scattered the pack of ill-omened thoughts as if by a magic wand, and he returned to the châlet in an altered mood.

He found Ichabod at war with a fanatical French photographer, a gentleman who had sentenced himself to six weeks' solitary confinement at Handeck, involving such rough board and lodging as a clever criminal might have made a Times grievance of. The artist was very eloquent on the subject of his sufferings, but declared himself, nevertheless, in the third heaven. The fair weather for which he had waited so long had relented yesterday, and condescended to favour him. He had got a divine light, and taken the never-before-achieved or attempted view upon which he had set his heart.

Ichabod could not help laughing at his earnestness, or refrain from reminding him that those six precious weeks had been wasted, and that, supposing his pet photograph obtained ever such a sale, it could never repay him for the long delay and enforced idleness.

The Frenchman exploded. Ah yes, it might be one whim, it might be one folly, but it was part of himself, for he had vowed to take this view, which had baffled all other photographers. He would have waited for it six months in this purgatory of an inn if he must. Money might go to the deuce. Why, this was a question of a strong caprice. Not but what he meant to make as many francs

as he could out of his caprice now he had succeeded, and he ended by blandly suggesting that Ichabod should put down his name for half-a-dozen copies-a request that was summarily declined. He then attacked Tony, with a more satisfactory result. Generosity is one of the first symptoms of a brightening mind, and Ichabod had to shake his head over the incurably impulsive character of his young friend.

He had occasion to do so again before the next morning. The occupants of the châlet retired early to bed. Towards the middle of the night Ichabod was roused from a comfortable slumber by Tony shaking him vigorously.

"I say, old fellow, get up, do; you must, indeed."

"What on earth for ?" muttered Ichabod, crossly, only half awake. "To look at the moon. By all that's glorious, it baffles description-imagination!"

"I-get up to look at a moon?" He was wide awake now.

"Yes, I've been watching it this half hour ("Tony, what a fool you are!" put in Ichabod, parenthetically), till I couldn't help coming to wake you. One look out of the window and you'll forgive me."

Tony, it is to be feared, was not prompted solely by enthusiasm. He was stifling a laugh, and his face, but for the darkness, would have betrayed how thoroughly he enjoyed Ichabod's ineffable disgust.

The latter said nothing, but wrapped himself in his dressinggown and marched to the window, to judge between Tony and the

moon.

It was a half moon, riding high in a starry cloudless sky. The intense brilliancy of the atmosphere seemed preternaturally to quicken the power of vision. Every

thing was as if seen through fairy glasses that distinctly showed even the dewdrops, the gossamer threads, tiny ferns, and fibres of moss and grass. At intervals a meteor, like a golden dart, shot through the air, and sank out of sight behind the black fir groves and stony mountains. The crash of the waterfall was loud and ceaseless.

In spite of the magnificence of the scene, Tony was too taken up in teazing Ichabod to attend to it.

"What do you say to that?" he asked triumphantly.

"Just what I always have said, that the moon has a great deal to answer for," Ichabod replied. "I verily believe that, but for her, we might have no lovers, no poets."

"No lunatics, in short," laughed Tony.

Exactly. Oh, I'd blow her out if I could, with her glamour and glare, and deceptive veil. I thought her day was past, though, and a moonlight night a topic too oldfashioned and puerile even for you to rave about it. And now, by your leave, I shall go to bed."

He went. But Tony remained, and when he had done laughing, still sat, staring out and lucubrating, till driven by the piercing cold to follow his friend's example.

CHAPTER XV.

"TONY," remarked Ichabod, the following evening, "we have only been abroad a week, it is true, but it strikes me that, whatever was amiss with our health at starting, we have both of us already contrived to get into first-rate condition again.'

They had crossed the Grimsel Pass that day, and were talking over their future movements in the dining-room of the little hotel that

sits solitary at the foot of the glacier of the Rhone.

"And so," he concluded, "I think we may consider ourselves to have already accomplished the object of our journey."

"One of its objects," said Tony. "I had only one," returned Ichabod; "and what I say now is this, why waste our money and time in carrying coals to Newcastle? as we may find a better market for our capital elsewhere." "So you propose-"

"To decide on taking the shortest round, which from here, I imagine, would be by Lucerne, and thence home direct. I suppose you have no objection."

Tony said he had a dozen of the strongest. Having come so far, were they to turn their backs on the Alps without having done much more than make their bow to them? So much, too, might be seen by going just a little farther. He surprised Ichabod by his obstinacy, and forced him at last to agree to a compromise. They would go down the Rhone valley, visit Zermatt on the way, and then descend to Lausanne and Geneva, whence Tony promised to set his face towards home without

a murmur.

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"I always wonder," observed Ichabod, as they started on their drive along the valley the next morning, how it is that, in spite of the progress of science, the thousand ways in which discoveries are being turned to practical account, nobody should as yet have started a company for supplying pure mountain air to the inhabitants of London. Now we can analyse chemically and know all the different parts of the atmosphere and their proportions. I look forward to some coming enormous institution of mountain air baths, where the oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, ozone, and aqueous

vapour shall be properly mixed, to be inhaled by those who need it. So a man might live in London within three minutes' walk of the benefits of Chamouni, all of which would then be available without the bother and risk of a journey."

Tony protested that the two last were part of the prescription. Exercise, excitement, change, amusement, were necessary things, but that could not always so well be had, or would not be 80 willingly taken, at home.

Ichabod laughed such a confession of weakness to scorn of course. He could prove that there would always be room in the most crowded town hive for exercise, even should it become necessary to set up public treadmills, to economise space. People who refused to accustom themselves to such arrangementsarrangements made necessary by the state of society in their time -must just suffer the penalty of not being adapted to the conditions under which they had to live, and succumb in the battle of life accordingly.

Ichabod had to suffer a good deal at Tony's hands during the next day or two. The young traveller was Alp intoxicated, and kept ringing the changes on every note of admiration. Partly, it must be owned, for the malicious pleasure of tormenting his companion, who saw nothing in the Oberland or the Valais but the pump of Europe, and a very clumsy one, as pumps go.

Ichabod quite dreaded the approach to the Matterhorn. He knew what a fertile source of enthusiastic nonsense it is-an absolute nuisance when boys, young ladies, and old men are of the party.

They came in sight of it suddenly, as they were approaching Zermatt. Fresh snow had fallen

the night before, and the Colossus rose before them in the double splendour of majesty of form and dazzling whiteness.

But Tony, whether because he was tired or because he could find no suitable word in his dictionary, kept silence; and even when his irreverence, Ichabod, whose dictionary was equal to every emergency, compared the mountain to a big cockatoo, "Very like a whale was all the reply he provoked.

In a few minutes more they were at the hotel at Zermatt, and Tony was reading over the list of visitors. Here, among the arrivals of yesterday, he found what he had looked for in every traveller's book since they left Handeck, the names of Mr. Lee and his daughter.

They were at the opposition inn, of course. Still Zermatt is so small and imprisoned that, once within its narrow limits, even friends can hardly miss each other.

The next day, however, it rained, and so peremptorily that for a tourist there was nothing to do but to sit helplessly at the window, fret, storm, or offer up prayers for fine weather, according to the dictates of his organism. Tony was consumed with a dire impatience that made the confinement a trial indeed. "See now," said Ichabod, philosophically, "how inconvenient is your idea of nature compared to mine. Make her a goddess, and she is always disgracing herself-make her a laboratory only, and she cannot disappoint you. Who could worship a fog or a grey drizzle like this? Yet they are nature just as much as sunshine. But her laws and her workings are always on view, and sometimes from the most detestable phenomena we may learn the most valuable- if not quite pleasant-facts with regard to man and the universe.

You won't have lost this sloppy day, Tony," he added, quizzically, "if it helps to open your eyes to the hollowness of what people call the religion of nature, still rampant, I am sorry to say, in the human mind."

"Rampant in mine I confess," returned Tony, "and I cannot spare it either yet-the goddess has her teaching as well as the laboratory."

"Yes, but of a morality that clashes a little with ours. For instance, you know how the swallows, when about to migrate, pierce the weaker fry with their bills, and make a general massacre of their own kith and kin."

"Those cursed swallows!" muttered Tony. "Oh, yes, I know; how they are always brought in when a happy theory has to be knocked on the head. But you know how the ancient heroes, when they lost a battle, used to command their own soldiers to kill them, sooner than fall by the hands of their enemies. You would scarcely call this ferocity on the part of the soldiers."

"But the swallows, Tony? What on earth are you talking about?”

"Don't be impatient. I'm coming back to them. Of course you know also, Ichabod, that flights of migratory birds are often followed by vultures and kites, that prey on the laggers. Suppose our swallow chooses rather to die by the beak of his friend than to make a supper for his foe."

Acquitting the swallow-say it is a necessary law of nature that the strong should prey on the weak. Is it from such laws that we can learn our ethics, justice and humanity, etcetera ?"

"Yes," said Tony audaciously, "it's the old song of the lower principle yielding to the higher. Even if I'm to be the one to

knock under, I wouldn't have the law reversed for me. It is good." "What is bad?" said Ichabod, sententiously, "and what is good? Terms exchangeable in every place and age. Duty is an arbitrary

thing; different, nay, opposite, in different creeds. The virtue of one nation is the accursed thing to another."

"What is happiness?" said Tony, mimicking him, "and what is misery? Terms exchangeable in every place and age. Pleasure is an arbitrary thing; its conditions different, opposite even, to different people. If you doubt it, I refer you to my note book. Yet that happiness and misery are realities even you wouldn't deny." Oh, but I would."

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Oh, nonsense. The sun's brilliant. Look! Exeunt clouds and enter the Matterhorn!"

"This brightness is treacherous." "Oh yes, we know that," said Tony, turning round a little desperate, like an antelope at bay. "The weather's as fickle and false as a thief or a woman; the stream thinks nothing of drowning, or the hail of stunning, or the lightning of burning you to a cinder; all acts which, if committed by men, we should call frightful enormities. But my ethics are out of order,

for I love a storm, murderous tastes, and all; the danger doubles the pleasure of the sight."

Was

This was flat rebellion. the scholar turning restive in good earnest? Or perhaps it might be the electricity in the atmosphere. Ichabod trusted to a good soaking for bringing him shortly to his senses, and returned to read over the old newspapers for the tenth time that day.

Tony took himself out of doors, strolling beyond the village, following the bank of the swollen stream. Crossing it presently he struck up a mountain path skirting a pine wood in the direction of the Görner glacier.

Most glaciers that have come down to look at us instead of daring us to beard them in their lair on high are exceedingly disappointing, for they reach us little better than a mass of congealed mud with a soiled and slimy face.

The Görner is a grand exception, a clear, frozen, petrified cataract, with transparent tints of unsurpassable beauty, all sapphire and aqua-marine.

But the storm was still hanging about the hills. "Ichabod's a true prophet," said Tony, grimly, 66 as usual. Already I feel it coming down without the smallest compunction for me, my good clothes, delicate constitution, and exposed situation on the brow of a hill. Oh, unoffending youth that I am, what have I done to be wetted to the skin, perhaps becolded to death by the mysterious workings of a meteorological providence?”

Luckily for him there was a little châlet close at hand, a winter den for cattle, rude in its workmanship as a Bushman's hut, but solid and opaque. Tony crept inside. It was dark and rough, with no opening except the door. But there was room to stand up