he corkscrew, Harris's hat blew over the last remaining
bit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feet
high--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and
fragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. We went
leisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but we
had made a mistake, as to that. We hunted during a couple of hours--not
because the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find
out how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground where
there was nothing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading in
bed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it is
smaller than a saber; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could
have been, and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment
that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around and
turning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and the
cylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a complete
opera-glass. We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner can
have his adventurous lost-property by submitting proofs and paying costs
of rehabilitation. We had hopes of finding the owner there, distributed
around amongst the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph;
but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from being disheartened,
for there was a considerable area which we had not thoroughly searched;
we were satisfied he was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a
day at Leuk and come back and get him.

Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and arrange about what
we would do with him when we got him. Harris was for contributing him to
the British Museum; but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is the
difference between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am all
for the simple right, even though I lose money by it. Harris argued in
favor of his proposition against mine, I argued in favor of mine and
against his. The discussion warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed
into a quarrel. I finally said, very decidedly:

"My mind is made up. He goes to the widow."

Harris answered sharply:

"And MY mind is made up. He goes to the Museum."

I said, calmly:

"The museum may whistle when it gets him."

Harris retorted:

"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling, for I will see
that she never gets him."

After some angry bandying