urse, and shun guides and inns when I can. I care
for open air, colour, flowers, weeds, birds, insects, mountains. There's
a world behind the mask. I call this life; and the town's a boiling pot,
intolerably stuffy. My one ambition is to be out of it. I thank heaven I
have not another on earth. Yes, I care for my note-book, because it's of
no use to a human being except me. I slept beside a spring last night,
and I never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have discovered
the great secret: I may be wrong, of course.' And if so, he had his
philosophy, the admission was meant to say.

Carinthia expected the revelation of a notable secret, but none came;
or if it did it eluded her grasp:--he was praising contemplation, he
was praising tobacco. He talked of the charm of poverty upon a settled
income of a very small sum of money, the fruit of a compact he would
execute with the town to agree to his perpetual exclusion from it, and
to retain his identity, and not be the composite which every townsman
was. He talked of Buddha. He said: 'Here the brook's the brook, the
mountain's the mountain: they are as they always were.'

'You'd have men be the same,' Chillon remarked as to a nursling
prattler, and he rejoined: 'They've lost more than they've gained;
though, he admitted, 'there has been some gain, in a certain way.'

Fortunately for them, young men have not the habit of reflecting upon
the indigestion of ideas they receive from members of their community,
sometimes upon exchange. They compare a view of life with their own
view, to condemn it summarily; and he was a curious object to Chillon as
the perfect opposite of himself.

'I would advise you,' Chillon said, 'to get a pair of Styrian boots, if
you intend to stay in the Alps. Those boots of yours are London make.'

'They 're my father's make,' said Mr. Woodseer.

Chillon drew out his watch. 'Come, Carinthia, we must be off.' He
proposed his guide, and, as Anton was rejected, he pointed the route
over the head of the valley, stated the distance to an inn that way,
saluted and strode.

Mr. Woodseer, partly rising, presumed, in raising his hat and thanking
Carinthia, to touch her fingers. She smiled on him, frankly extending
her open hand, and pointing the route again, counselling him to rest at
the inn, even saying: 'You have not yet your strength to come on with
us?'

He thought he would stay some time longer: he had a disposition to
smoke.

She tripped away