ge peasant, so miserable and poverty-stricken, so haggard and
hopeless-looking, haunted her thoughts both waking and sleeping. Early
the next morning she and Canon Pascal went to the hovel inhabited by
Jean Merle, but found it deserted and locked up. Some laborers had seen
him start off at daybreak up the Truebsee Alps, from which he might be
either ascending the Titlis or taking the route to the Joch-Pass. There
was no chance of his return that day, and Jean Merle's absence might
last for several days, as he was eccentric, and bestowed his confidence
on nobody. There was little more to be learned of him, except that he
was a heretic, a stranger, and a miser. Canon Pascal and Alice visited
once more Roland Sefton's grave, and then they went on their way over
the Joch-Pass, with some faint hopes of meeting with Jean Merle on their
route, hopes that were not fulfilled.

CHAPTER XI.

COMING TO HIMSELF.

When he left the cemetery Jean Merle went home to his wretched chalet,
flung himself down on his rough bed, and slept for some hours the
profound and dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. The last three nights
he had passed under the stars, and stretched upon the low
juniper-bushes. He awoke suddenly, from the bright, clear moonlight of a
cloudless sky and dry atmosphere streaming in through his door, which he
had left open. There was light enough for him to withdraw some money
from a safe hiding-place he had constructed in his crazy old hut, and to
make up a packet of most of the clothing he possessed. There were
between twenty and thirty pounds in gold pieces of twenty francs
each--the only money he was master of now his Lucerne bankers had failed
him. A vague purpose, dimly shaping itself, was in his brain, but he was
in no hurry to see it take definite form. With his small bundle of
clothes and his leathern purse he started off in the earliest rays of
the dawn to escape being visited by the young English girl, whom he had
seen at the grave, and who would probably seek him out in the morning
with her father. Who they were he could find out if he himself returned
to Engelberg.

_If_ he returned; for, as he ascended the steep path leading up to the
Truebsee Alp, he turned back to look at the high mountain-valley where he
had dwelt so long, as though he was looking upon it for the last time.
It seemed to him as if he was awaking out of a long lethargy and
paralysis. Three days ago the dull round of incessant toil