Where had Bob been going, and where was he going now?  If these were not the first questions that I asked myself on coming away from him, they were at all events among my last thoughts that night, and as it happened, quite my first next morning.  His voice had reached me through my bedroom window, on the head of a dream about himself.  I got up and looked out; there was Bob Evers seeing the suit-case into the tiny train which brings your baggage (and yourself, if you like) to the very door of the Riffel Alp Hotel.  Bob did not like and I watched him out of sight down the winding path threaded by the shining rails.  He walked slowly, head and shoulders bent, it might be with dogged resolve, it might be in mere depression; there was never a glimpse of his face, nor a backward glance as he swung round the final corner, with his great-coat over his arm.

In spite of my curiosity as to his destination, I made no attempt to discover it for myself, but on consideration I was guilty of certain inquiries concerning that of Mrs. Lascelles.  They had not to be very exhaustive; she had made no secret of her original plans upon leaving the Riffel Alp, and they did not appear to have undergone much change.  I myself left the same forenoon, and lay that night amid the smells of Brigues, after a little tour of its hotels, in one of which I found the name of Mrs. Lascelles in the register, while in every one I was prepared to light upon Bob Evers in the flesh.  But that encounter did not occur.

In the early morning I was one of a shivering handful who awaited the diligence for the Furka Pass; and an ominous drizzle made me thankful that my telegram of the previous day had been too late to secure me an outside seat.  It was quite damp enough within.  Nor did the day improve as we drove, or the view attract me in the least.  It was at its worst as a sight, and I at mine as a sightseer.  I have as little recollection of my fellow-passengers; but I still see the page in the hotel register at the Rhone Glacier, with the name I sought written boldly in its place, just twenty-four hours earlier.

The Furka Pass has its European reputation; it would gain nothing from my enthusiastic praises, had I any enthusiasm to draw upon, or the descriptive powers to do it justice.  But what I best remember is the time it took us to climb those interminable zig-zags, and to shake off the too tenacious sight of the hotel in the hollow where I had seen a signature and eaten my lunch.  Now I think of it, there were two couples who had come so far with us, but at the Rhone Glacier they exchanged their mutually demonstrative adieux, and I thought the couple who came on would never have done waving to the couple who stayed behind.  They kept it up for at least an hour, and then broke out again at each of our many last glimpses of the hotel, now hundreds of feet below.  That was the only diversion until these energetic people went to see the glacier cave at the summit of the pass.  I am glad to remember that I preferred refreshment at the inn.  After that, night fell upon a scene whose desolation impressed me more than its grandeur, and so in the end we rattled into Andermatt:  here was a huge hotel all but empty, with a perfect tome of a visitors’ book, and in it sure enough the fine free autograph which I was beginning to know so well.