We went downstairs into the long and narrow dining-room with its long and narrow table.  There were two rows of plates on it.  At one of the many uncurtained windows stood a tall bony man with a bald head set off by a bunch of black hair above each ear and with a long black beard.  He glanced up from the paper he was reading and seemed genuinely astonished at our intrusion.  By-and-by more men came in.  Not one of them looked like a tourist.  Not a single woman appeared.  These men seemed to know each other with some intimacy, but I cannot say they were a very talkative lot.  The bald-headed man sat down gravely at the head of the table.  It all had the air of a family party.  By-and-by, from one of the vigorous servant-girls in national costume, we discovered that the place was really a boarding-house for some English engineers engaged at the works of the St. Gothard Tunnel; and I could listen my fill to the sounds of the English language, as far as it is used at a breakfast-table by men who do not believe in wasting many words on the mere amenities of life.

This was my first contact with British mankind apart from the tourist kind seen in the hotels of Zurich and Lucerne—­the kind which has no real existence in a workaday world.  I know now that the bald-headed man spoke with a strong Scotch accent.  I have met many of his kind since, both ashore and afloat.  The second engineer of the steamer “Mavis”, for instance, ought to have been his twin brother.  I cannot help thinking that he really was, though for some reasons of his own he assured me that he never had a twin brother.  Anyway the deliberate bald-headed Scot with the coal-black beard appeared to my boyish eyes a very romantic and mysterious person.

We slipped out unnoticed.  Our mapped-out route led over the Furca Pass towards the Rhone Glacier, with the further intention of following down the trend of the Hasli Valley.  The sun was already declining when we found ourselves on the top of the pass, and the remark alluded to was presently uttered.

We sat down by the side of the road to continue the argument begun half a mile or so before.  I am certain it was an argument because I remember perfectly how my tutor argued and how without the power of reply I listened with my eyes fixed obstinately on the ground.  A stir on the road made me look up—­and then I saw my unforgettable Englishman.  There are acquaintances of later years, familiars, shipmates, whom I remember less clearly.  He marched rapidly towards the east (attended by a hang-dog Swiss guide) with the mien of an ardent and fearless traveller.  He was clad in a knickerbocker suit, but as at the same time he wore short socks under his laced boots, for reasons which whether hygienic or conscientious were surely imaginative, his calves exposed to the public gaze and to the tonic air of high altitudes, dazzled the beholder by the splendour of their marble-like condition and their rich tone of young ivory.