During the first part of the journey toward Zug, the Major had little to say.  He leaned wearily back in his seat with his eyes closed much of the time.  But as they began passing places that were connected with interesting scenes of his childhood, he roused himself, and pointed them out with as much enjoyment as if he were a schoolboy, coming home on his first vacation.

“See those queer little towers still left standing on the remnants of the old town wall,” he said as they approached Zug.  “The lake front rests on a soft, shifting substratum of sand, and there is danger, when the water is unusually low, that it may not be able to support the weight of the houses built upon it.  One day, over four hundred years ago, part of the wall and some of the towers sank down into the lake with twenty-six houses.

“I have heard my grandmother tell of it, many a time, as she heard the tale from her grandmother.  Many lives were lost that day, and there was a great panic.  Later in the day, some one saw a cradle floating out in the lake, and when it was drawn in, there lay a baby, cooing and kicking up his heels as happily as if cradle-rides on the water were common occurrences.  He was the little son of the town clerk, and grew up to be one of my ancestors.  Grandmother was very fond of telling that tale, how the baby smiled on his rescuers, and what a fine, pleasant man he grew up to be, beloved by the whole village.

“It has not been much over a dozen years since another piece of the town sank down into the water.  A long stretch of lake front with houses and gardens and barns was sucked under.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Lloyd, with a shiver.  “Let us go somewhere else, Papa Jack,” she begged.  “I don’t want to sleep in a place where the bottom may drop out any minute.”

Her father laughed at her fears, and the Major assured her that they would not take her to a hotel near the water’s edge.

“We are going to the other side of the town, to an inn that stands close against the mountainside.  The inn-keeper is an old friend of mine, who has lived here all his life.”

In spite of all they said to quiet her fears, the Little Colonel was far from feeling comfortable, and took small pleasure at first in going to see the sights of the quaint little town.  She was glad when they pushed away from the pier next morning, in the steamboat that was to take them across the lake to the William Tell chapel.  She dreaded to return, but a handful of letters from Lloydsboro Valley, and one apiece from Betty and Eugenia that she found awaiting her at the inn, made her forget the shifting sands below her.  She read and re-read some of them, answered several, and then began to look for the Major and Hero.  They were nowhere to be found.

They went away directly after lunch, her father told her, to the chalet on the mountain back of the town.  “You will have to be content with my humble society,” he added.  “You can’t expect to be always escorted by titled soldiers and heroes.”