view of the silent lake, asleep in the bosom of the mountains, and dreaming of the sky.  On most of the walls were votive offerings in the shape of pictures, sent to the monks by grateful visitors in far-off countries.  One was an engraving which had adorned the nursery in my youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me.  It was Gustave Dore’s “Christian Martyrs,” and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to “climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs.”  Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, impotent rebellion against injustice and misplaced power.

Later, I wandered through the pathetically interesting Alpine garden, carefully kept by the monks; and then, sure that by this time the Brat and his cavalcade must be far on their way, I started, with Joseph and Finois, to stroll down the Pass towards Aosta.

I had promised Jack and Molly to tell them in my letters, whether it would be possible for them, with a motor, to go by some of the routes which I chose.  Over the St. Bernard from Martigny to the Hospice they could not have ventured, even in the stealthy, fly-by-night manner in which they had “done” the St. Gothard and the Simplon; for on the St. Bernard the road was always narrow, often stony and dangerous.  Beyond, on the other side, even carriages cannot yet pass, descending to Aosta, though in another year the new road will be finished.  As it is, for many a generation pilgrims from the Hospice to Italy have been obliged to go down as far as the mountain village of St. Rhemy either on foot or mule-back; thus there was no hope for Mercedes there.

I went swinging down the steep and winding path, my heart chanting a psalm to the mountains.  Mountains like cathedrals, with carved, graceful spires; mountains like frozen waves left by some great sea when the world was chaos; mountains like leaning towers of Pisa; mountains like sentinel Titans; mountains silver-grey; mountains dark-red.  The “Pain de Sucre” was strangest of all in form, perhaps, and Joseph distressed me much by remarking guilelessly that it, and other white shapes at which he pointed, looked exactly like frosted wedding-cakes.  It was true; they did; but they looked like nobler things also, and I resented having so cheap a simile put into my head.

With every step the way grew more glorious.  This was an enchanted land.  I could hardly believe that thousands of travellers had seen it before, and would again.  I felt as if I had fallen Sindbad-like, into a valley undiscovered by man; and, like Sindbad’s valley, this sparkled to my dazzled eyes with countless gems.  Not all cold, white diamonds, like his, but gems of every colour.  The rocks through which our path was cut, glowed with rainbow hues, like different