‘I suppose I ought to have taken a guide,’ he said.

‘There’s not a doubt of that,’ said Chillon Kirby.

Carinthia halted, leaning on her staff:  ’But I had the same wish.  They told us at the inn of an Englishman who left last night to sleep on the mountain, and would go alone; and did I not say, brother, that must be true love of the mountains?’

‘These freaks get us a bad name on the Continent,’ her brother replied.  He had no sympathy with nonsense, and naturally not with a youth who smelt of being a dreamy romancer and had caused the name of Englishman to be shouted in his ear in derision.  And the fellow might delay his arrival at the Baths and sight of the lady of his love for hours!

They managed to get him hobbling and slipping to the first green tuft of the base, where long black tongues of slate-rubble pouring into the grass, like shore-waves that have spent their burden, seem about to draw back to bring the mountain down.  Thence to the level pasture was but a few skips performed sliding.

‘Well, now,’ said Chillon, ‘you can stand?’

‘Pretty well, I think.’  He tried his foot on the ground, and then stretched his length, saying that it only wanted rest.  Anton pressed a hand at his ankle and made him wince, but the bones were sound, leg and hip not worse than badly bruised.  He was advised by Anton to plant his foot in the first running water he came to, and he was considerate enough to say to Chillon: 

’Now you can leave me; and let me thank you.  Half an hour will set me right.  My name is Woodseer, if ever we meet again.’

Chillon nodded a hurried good-bye, without a thought of giving his name in return.  But Carinthia had thrown herself on the grass.  Her brother asked her in dismay if she was tired.  She murmured to him:  ’I should like to hear more English.’

‘My dear girl, you’ll have enough of it in two or three weeks.’

‘Should we leave a good deed half done, Chillon?’

‘He shall have our guide.’

‘He may not be rich.’

‘I’ll pay Anton to stick to him.’

‘Brother, he has an objection to guides.’

Chillon cast hungry eyes on his watch:  ‘Five minutes, then.’  He addressed Mr. Woodseer, who was reposing, indifferent to time, hard-by:  ’Your objection to guides might have taught you a sharp lesson.  It ’s like declining to have a master in studying a science—­trusting to instinct for your knowledge of a bargain.  One might as well refuse an oar to row in a boat.’

’I ‘d rather risk it,’ the young man replied.  ’These guides kick the soul out of scenery.  I came for that and not for them.’

‘You might easily have been a disagreeable part of the scene.’

‘Why not here as well as elsewhere?’

‘You don’t care for your life?’

‘I try not to care for it a fraction more than Destiny does.’

‘Fatalism.  I suppose you care for something?’