th and grass austerely, not deepening or confusing them. They
wound their way by borders of crag, seeing in a dell below the mouth of
the idle mine begirt with weedy and shrub-hung rock, a dripping
semi-circle. Farther up they came on the flat juniper and crossed a wet
ground-thicket of whortleberry: their feet were in the moist moss among
sprigs of heath; and a great fir-tree stretched his length, a peeled
multitude of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the midst of
scattered fire-stained members, and through their skeleton limbs the
sheer precipice of slate-rock of the bulk across the chasm, nursery of
hawk and eagle; wore a thin blue tinge, the sign of warmer light abroad.

'This way, my brother!' cried Carinthia, shuddering at a path he was
about to follow.

Dawn in the mountain-land is a meeting of many friends. The pinnacle, the
forest-head, the latschen-tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant cliff
and giant of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a common
recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and
bloomless. Another minute and they had flung off their mail, and changed
to various, indented, intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel; and
they had all a look of watchfulness that made them one company. The smell
of rock-waters and roots of herb and moss grew keen; air became a wine
that raised the breast high to breathe it; an uplifting coolness pervaded
the heights. What wonder that the mountain-bred girl should let fly her
voice. The natural carol woke an echo. She did not repeat it.

'And we will not forget our home, Chillon,' she said, touching him gently
to comfort some saddened feeling.

The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the lofty arch of dawn and
melted from brown to purpleblack. The upper sky swam with violet; and in
a moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, and then suffused.
It seemed that the heights fronted East to eye the interflooding of
colours, and it was imaginable that all turned to the giant whose
forehead first kindled to the sun: a greeting of god and king.

On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very
distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation
occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and
that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the
splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an immediate division from what
we love makes the th