hed to her
buzzum in the rampagin' hunger of infancy. Then I've got another
attachment--not quite so old, but wery strong, oh uncommon powerful--for
a young lady named Susan Quick. D'you happen to know her?"

"Oh, Gillie, you're a sad boy," said Susan.

"Well, I make a pint never to contradict a 'ooman, believin' it to be
dangerous," returned Gillie, "but I can't say that I _feel_ sad. I'm
raither jolly than otherwise."

A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.

During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the
visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards,
draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count
and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds--did not, in
fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.

"Mother," said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the
same evening, "I want twenty pounds from you."

"Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr
Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no
such thing as money, and no need for it!"

Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and
pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would
probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its
languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something
like seriousness, too, in the good lady's eye. She had been impressed
more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she
had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she
had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred
since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season
without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps.
On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently
married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once,
was killed by falling rocks before her husband's eyes. On another
occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a
guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much
injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning
slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young
fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the
newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to
witness the