‘Kind—­warm to you, Chillon?’

’Some of them, when you know them.  “Warm,” is hardly the word.  Winter’s warm on skates.  You must do a great deal for yourself.  They don’t boil over.  By the way, don’t expect much of your uncle.’

‘Will he not love me?’

’He gives you a lodging in his house, and food enough, we’ll hope.  You won’t see company or much of him.’

’I cannot exist without being loved.  I do not care for company.  He must love me a little.’

’He is one of the warm-hearted race—­he’s mother’s brother; but where his heart is, I ’ve not discovered.

Bear with him just for the present, my dear, till I am able to support you.’

‘I will,’ she said.

The dreary vision of a home with an unloving uncle was not brightened by the alternative of her brother’s having to support her.  She spoke of money.  ‘Have we none, Chillon?’

‘We have no debts,’ he answered.  ’We have a claim on the Government here for indemnification for property taken to build a fortress upon one of the passes into Italy.  Father bought the land, thinking there would be a yield of ore thereabout; and they have seized it, rightly enough, but they dispute our claim for the valuation we put on it.  A small sum they would consent to pay.  It would be a very small sum, and I ’m father’s son, I will have justice.’

‘Yes!’ Carthinia joined with him to show the same stout nature.

‘We have nothing else except a bit to toss up for luck.’

‘And how can I help being a burden on my brother?’ she inquired, in distress.

‘Marry, and be a blessing to a husband,’ he said lightly.

They performed a sacrifice of the empty bottle and cracked cup on the site of their meal, as if it had been a ceremony demanded from travellers, and leaving them in fragments, proceeded on their journey refreshed.

Walking was now high enjoyment, notwithstanding the force of the sun, for they were a hardy couple, requiring no more than sufficient nourishment to combat the elements with an exulting blood.  Besides they loved mountain air and scenery, and each step to the ridge of the pass they climbed was an advance in splendour.  Peaks of ashen hue and pale dry red and pale sulphur pushed up, straight, forked, twisted, naked, striking their minds with an indeterminate ghostliness of Indian, so strange they were in shape and colouring.  These sharp points were the first to greet them between the blue and green.  A depression of the pass to the left gave sight of the points of black fir forest below, round the girths of the barren shafts.  Mountain blocks appeared pushing up in front, and a mountain wall and woods on it, and mountains in the distance, and cliffs riven with falls of water that were silver skeins, down lower to meadows, villages and spires, and lower finally to the whole valley of the foaming river, field and river seeming in imagination rolled out from the hand of the heading mountain.