d came to Domo d'Ossola, where
a strange German-Italian patois was spoken. It was in the middle of
April, and we were warned that it would be very dangerous to cross the
Simplon, but we went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners,
through intervals of snowstorm. Now and then we came to rushing mountain-
torrents bursting over the road; far away, ever and anon, we heard the
roar of a _lauwine_ or avalanche; sometimes I looked out, and could see
straight down below me a thousand feet into an abyss or on a headlong
stream. We entered the great tunnel directly from another, for the snow
lay twenty feet deep on the road, and a passage had been dug under it for
several hundred feet, and so two tunnels were connected. Just in the
worst of the road beyond, and in the bitterest cold, we met a sleigh, in
which were an English gentleman and a very beautiful young lady,
apparently his daughter, going to Italy. "I saw her but an instant, yet
methinks I see her now"--a sweet picture in a strange scene. Poets used
to "me-think" and "me-seem" more in those days, but we endured it. Then
in the morning we saw Brieg, far down below us in the valley in green
leaves and sunshine, and when we got there then I realised that we were
in a new land.

We had a great giant of a German conductor, who seemed to regard Clark
and me as under his special care. Once when we had wandered afar to look
at something, and it was time for the stage or _Eilwagen_ to depart, he
hunted us up, scolded us "like a Dutch uncle" in German, and drove us
along before him like two bad boys to the diligence, "pawing up" first
one and then the other, after which, shoving us in, he banged and locked
the door with a grunt of satisfaction, even as the Giant Blunderbore
locked the children in the coffer after slamming down the lid. Across
the scenes and shades of forty years, that picture of the old conductor
driving us like two unruly urchins back to school rises, never to be
forgotten.

We went by mountains and lakes and Gothic towns, rocks, forests, old
chateaux, and rivers--the road was wild in those days--till we came to
Geneva. Thence Clark went his way to Paris, and I remained alone for a
week. I had, it is true, a letter of introduction to a very eminent
Presbyterian Swiss clergyman, so I sent it in with my card. His wife
came out on the balcony, looked coolly down at me, and concluding, I
suppose from my appearance, that I was one of the ungodly, w