On the other hand, we shall deserve a long
drink and much sympathy. As for you, Troubles, you're the best company I
know, and all is well."

The first scarlet huntsman blew into his horn,
"Lirala, Lovely Morning, I'm glad I was born."

XVI

At first the way, lying through waist-high fir scrub, was pretty bad
underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber, where the trees had
done much to arrest the snow, and the going was not so severe. Aladdin
calculated that he should make the distance in an hour and a half; and
when the wood ended, he looked at his watch and found that the first
mile, together with only twenty-five minutes, was behind him.

"That's the rate of an hour and a quarter, Troubles," he said. "And
that's good time. Are you listening?"

But following the wood was a great open space of country pitched up from
the surrounding levels, and naked to every fury of nature. Across that
upland the wind blew a wicked gale, scarifying the tops of knolls to the
brown, dead grass, and filling the hollows flush with snow. At times, to
keep from being blown over, it was necessary to lean against the gusts.
Aladdin was conscious of not making very rapid progress, but there was
something exhilarating in the wildness, the bitter cold, and the roar of
the wind; it had an effect as of sea thundering upon beach, great
views from mountain-tops, black wild nights, the coming of thunder and
freshness after intense heat, or any of the thousand and one vaster
demonstrations of nature. Now and again Aladdin sang snatches of song:

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight
In sunshine and shadow
Journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.

Or from "The Mole of Marimolena"

I was turning fifty-odd when the everlasting God
Smote a path of molten gold across the blue,
Says, "There's many million men would have done the like again,
But you didn't, and, my man, there's hope for you.

"Start sheets and sail for the Mole--
For the old rotten Mole of Marimolena;
There's maybe some one there
That you're longing to treat fair,
On the dismal, woeful Mole of Marimolena."

And other deep-sea chanteys,--the one in which the pirate found the Lady
in the C-a-a-bin and slivered off her head, or back to Red Renard, or
further to his own campaign song, and furthest of all to the bad, bad
young dog of a crow. Then he got quite out of