in the inventions. They had an improved rocket that would force military
chiefs to change their tactics: they had a new powder, a rifle, a model
musket--the latter based on his own plans; and a scheme for fortress
artillery likely to turn the preponderance in favour of the defensive
once again. 'And that will be really doing good,' said Chillon,
'for where it's with the offensive, there's everlasting bullying and
plundering.'

Carinthia warmly agreed with him, but begged him be sure his uncle
divided the profits equally. She discerned what his need of money
signified.

Tenderness urged her to say: 'Henrietta! Chillon.'

'Well?' he answered quickly.

'Will she wait?'

'Can she, you should ask.'

'Is she brave?'

'Who can tell, till she has been tried?'

'Is she quite free?'

'She has not yet been captured.'

'Brother, is there no one else...?'

'There's a nobleman anxious to bestow his titles on her.'

'He is rich?'

'The first or second wealthiest in Great Britain, they say.'

'Is he young?'

'About the same age as mine.'

'Is he a handsome young man?'

'Handsomer than your brother, my girl.'

'No, no, no!' said she. 'And what if he is, and your Henrietta does not
choose him? Now let me think what I long to think. I have her close to
me.'

She rocked a roseate image on her heart and went to bed with it by
starlight.

By starlight they sprang to their feet and departed the next morning, in
the steps of a guide carrying, Chillon said, 'a better lantern than we
left behind us at the smithy.'

'Father!' exclaimed Carinthia on her swift inward breath, for this one
of the names he had used to give to her old home revived him to her
thoughts and senses fervently.

CHAPTER VI. THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

Three parts down a swift decline of shattered slate, where travelling
stones loosened from rows of scree hurl away at a bound after one roll
over, there sat a youth dusty and torn, nursing a bruised leg, not in
the easiest of postures, on a sharp tooth of rock, that might at any
moment have broken from the slanting slab at the end of which it formed
a stump, and added him a second time to the general crumble of the
mountain. He had done a portion of the descent in excellent imitation of
the detached fragments, and had parted company with his alpenstock and
plaid; preserving his hat and his knapsack. He was alone, disabled, and
cheerful; in doubt of the arrival of succour before he could tru