“Suppose the two galleries don’t meet end to end?” I spoke out my thought.

“But they will,” said Bolzano.  “Our calculations are precise, and we have allowed for an error of two inches:  I do not think there will be more.  There is a great system of triangulation across the mountains, and every few months our reckonings are verified.  By-and-bye, we shall hear the sound of each other’s drills; then, down will come the last dividing wall of rock, and Swiss and Italians will be shaking hands.”

I think, in coming out of the dark tunnels and windy galleries, I felt somewhat as Jonah must have felt after he had been discarded in distaste by the whale.  The light dazzled my eyes.  I could have shouted aloud with joy at sight of the sun.  I made Bolzano breakfast with me in the little inn at Iselle, and got upon my way again, at something past noon.  The vast turmoil of the growing railway was left behind.  It was like putting down a volume of Walt Whitman, and taking up Tennyson.

The Pass had the extraordinary individuality of one face as compared with another.  It had not even a family resemblance to the St. Gothard.  The air was sweet with the good smell of newly cut wood and resinous pines.  There were sudden glimpses of icy peaks, cut diamonds in the sun, seen for a moment, then swallowed up by stealthily creeping white clouds, or caressed by them with a benediction in passing.  Thin streaks of cascades on precipitous rocks made silver veinings in ebony.  Side valleys opened unexpectedly, and one knew from hearsay that gold mines were hidden there.  Treading the road built by Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht, to come out into a broad valley,—­a green amphitheatre, above which a company of white, mountain gods sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight.

If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here.  But then,—­I reminded myself hastily when this thought winked at me over my shoulder,—­I was stunned still, by my heavy disappointment.  I was not conscious to the full of my suffering now, but I should wake up to it by-and-bye, and then it would be awful—­as awful as the desolation left by a recent great avalanche whose appalling traces I had just seen.

[Illustration:  “TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLEON".]

I refused to be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to me the real thing.  If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on the Pass of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices called by his name.  If possible, I would have gone by them with my eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable puppies in a kennel opposite lured me, and I paused to talk to them.  They did not understand my language, and this was disappointing; but if I had not stopped I