“I wish we could get one now,” said I.  “But the prospect isn’t cheerful.  Molly Winston’s prophecy is being fulfilled.  She was certain that sooner or later I should be lost on a mountain; and her sketch of me, curled up in sleeping-sack and tent, toasting my toes before a fire of twigs, and eating tinned soup, steaming hot, made me long to lose myself immediately.  But, alas! a peasant child near Piedimulera is basking at this moment in my woolly sack, and battening on my Instantaneous Breakfasts.”

“Don’t think of them,” said the Boy.  “That way madness lies.  A chapter in my book shall be called, ‘How to be Happy though Freezing.’”

“What would be your definition of the state, precisely?”

“Being with Somebody you—­like.”

My temperature bounded up several degrees, thanks to these amends, but our sole comfort was in each other, since Joseph had no hope to give.  At this moment he parted the mist-curtain to remark that he could find no traces of a path or landmark of any kind.

Hours dragged on, and we were still wandering aimlessly, as one wanders in a troubled dream.  We were chilled to the bone, and as it was by this time late in the afternoon, I began to fear that we should have to spend the night on the mountain-side.  Revard was wreaking vengeance upon us for taking his name in vain.  We had made naught of him as a mountain; now he was showing us that, were he sixteen thousand feet high instead of four, he could scarcely put us to more serious inconvenience.

I was growing gravely anxious about the Boy, though the bitter cold and great fatigue had not quenched his spirit, when the smell of cattle and the muffled sound of human voices put life into the chill, dead body of the mist.  A house loomed before us, and I sprang to the comforting conclusion that we had stumbled upon one of the outlying offices of the hotel, but an instant showed me my mistake.  The low building was a rough stone chalet with two or three cowherds outside the door, and these men stared in surprise and curiosity at our ghostly party.

“Are we far from the hotel?” I asked in French, but no gleam of understanding lightened their faces; and it was not until Joseph had addressed them in the most extraordinary patois I had ever heard, that they showed signs of intelligence.  “Hoo-a-long, hoo-a-long, walla-ha?” he remarked, or words to that effect.

“Squall-a-doo, soo-a-lone, bolla-hang,” returned one of the men, suddenly wound up to gesticulate with violence.

“He says that the hotel is about half an hour’s walk from here,” Joseph explained to me, looking wistful.  And my own feelings gave me the clue to that look’s significance.

“Thank goodness!” I exclaimed heartily.  “But it would be tempting Providence to pass this house, which is at least a human habitation, without resting and warming the blood in our veins.  Perhaps we can get something to eat for ourselves and the donkeys—­to say nothing of something to drink.”