r-post, striped in brilliant crimson and yellow,
like a giant sugarstick. Over on the little Laufenplatz children were
playing about amongst the big iron salmon cages, and old people were
sitting in the sunshine on the seats by the fountain, where from time
to time a woman would fill her shining tin pails, or a man come to
rinse out a tall wooden funnel before strapping it on his back. Down
on the rocks below, in a little green cradle swinging over the
torrent, sat a man busy with his pipe and newspaper, which he
occasionally left to haul up and examine the big salmon nets by the
aid of the complicated rigging of masts and yards at his side.

'How charming it all is!' said Mabel, turning her bright face to Mark.
'I am so glad we didn't let ourselves be talked into going anywhere
else. Mamma thought we were mad to come here so early in the year. I
think she fancied it was somewhere in the heart of the Alps, though,
and I never expected anything like this myself?'

'How would you like to stay out here more than a month, Mabel--all the
summer, perhaps?' he asked.

'It would be delightful, for some things,' she said, 'but I think I
shall be willing to go back when the end of the month comes, Mark; we
_must_, you know; our house will be ready for us, and then there is
your work waiting for you, you know you would never write a line here,
you are so disgracefully idle!'

'I--I was only joking,' he said (although his expression was far from
jocular); 'we will enjoy all this while we can, and when--when the end
comes we can remember how happy we were!'

'When the end of this comes we shall only be beginning to be very
happy in another way at home in our own pretty house, Mark. I'm not in
the least afraid of the future. Are you?'

He drew her slight form towards him and pressed her to his heart with
a fervour in which there was despair as well as love.

'Do you think I could be afraid of any future, so long as you were
part of it, my darling?' he said. 'It is only the fear of losing you
that comes over me sometimes!'

'You silly boy!' said Mabel, looking up at his overcast face with a
little tender laugh. 'I never knew you could be so sentimental. I am
quite well, and I don't mean to die as long as you want me to take
care of you!'

He dreaded to lose her by a parting far bitterer than death; but he
had said too much already, and only smiled sadly to himself at the
thought of the ghastly mockery which the memory of he