s, but has not hitherto proved the
success which it was hoped it would be. I have stayed there two or three
times and found it very comfortable; doubtless, now that Signer Lombardi
of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become a more popular place of
resort.

I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto; here
the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached. There is
a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had.
The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her
sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley
as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a
somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline
nose; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she
wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look she
cast upon the expanse below made a very fine _ensemble_. "She would have
afforded," as Sir Walter Scott says, "a study for a Rembrandt, had that
celebrated painter existed at the period," {276} but she must have been a
smart-looking, handsome girl once.

She brightened up in conversation. I talked about Piora, which I already
knew, and the _Lago Tom_, the highest of the three lakes. She said she
knew the _Lago Tom_. I said laughingly, "Oh, I have no doubt you do.
We've had many a good day at the _Lago Tom_, I know." She looked down at
once.

In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active as a woman of forty,
and altogether she was a very grand old lady. Her house is scrupulously
clean. While I watched her spinning, I thought of what must so often
occur to summer visitors. I mean what sort of a look-out the old woman
must have in winter, when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow
drives down the valley with a fury of which we in England can have little
conception. What a place to see a snowstorm from! and what a place from
which to survey the landscape next morning after the storm is over and
the air is calm and brilliant. There are such mornings: I saw one once,
but I was at the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco. Ronco
would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the
valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep
shadow below, though the upper hill-sides may be seen to have the sun
upon them. I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from Airolo to