hich a
company of white, mountain gods sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight.

If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I
should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here. But
then,--I reminded myself hastily when this thought winked at me over
my shoulder,--I was stunned still, by my heavy disappointment. I was
not conscious to the full of my suffering now, but I should wake up to
it by-and-bye, and then it would be awful--as awful as the desolation
left by a recent great avalanche whose appalling traces I had just
seen.

[Illustration: "TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLEON".]

I refused to be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the
newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to
me the real thing. If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on
the Pass of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices
called by his name. If possible, I would have gone by them with my
eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable
puppies in a kennel opposite lured me, and I paused to talk to them.
They did not understand my language, and this was disappointing; but
if I had not stopped I should have missed a short cut which I half
saw, half suspected, dimly zigzagging down the mountain into an
extraordinarily deep valley, and tending in the direction of Brig. It
would have been a pity to pass it by, for though I often thought
myself lost, I eventually caught sight of a town, lying far below,
which could be no other than the one for which I was bound. After
three hours of fast walking down from the Hospice, I plunged through
an old archway into the main street of Brig.

Coming into it, I stopped to gaze up in astonishment at an enormous
house which looked to me as big as Windsor Castle. Indeed, to call it
a house does not express its personality at all; yet it was hardly
magnificent enough for a castle. At each corner was an immense tower,
ornamented with a big bulb of copper, like a gigantic and glorified
Spanish onion. A beautiful Renaissance gallery, flung across from one
tall building to another, lent grace to the otherwise too solid pile,
and I guessed that I must have come upon the ancient stronghold and
mansion of the famous Stockalper family, still existing and still one
of the most important in Switzerland. In the Pass I had seen the
towers built by the first Stockalper--that Gaspar who in mediaeval days
was called "King of th