have thought that
thing about colour and sound! This evening-blue, for instance. Do you
hear the music of it?"

"Yes. I'm not sure it isn't that which has made me answer your
questions. But now let's talk of something else--or better still,
let's not talk at all, for a while."

We were silent, and I wondered if the Boy's thoughts ran with mine, or
if he had closed and locked the secret door in his brain, and listened
dreamily to the sweet evening voices of this Valley of Musical Bells.

Suddenly, into the many sounds of the silence, broke a loud and
jarring note; the trampling of men's feet and horses' hoofs; loud
laughter and the jingling of accoutrements. We looked over the
balustrade to see a battalion of soldiers marching at ease, on their
way back from some mountain manoeuvres, and as we gazed down, they
stared up, a young fellow shouting to the Boy that he had better join
them.

"It's like life calling one back," said the strange child. "I suppose
one must always go on, somewhere else. And we--we must go on, though
it is sweet here."

"It was what I was thinking of just now," I answered. "Are we to part
company?"

The Boy laughed--an odd little laugh. "Why, that depends," said he
abruptly, "on where you are going. I've planned to walk back over the
St. Bernard to Martigny, and so by way of the Tete Noire to Chamounix.
That name--Chamounix--has always been to my ears, as Stevenson says,
'like the horns of elf-land, or crimson lake.' I want to come face to
face with Mont Blanc, of which I've only seen a far-off mirage, long
ago when I was a little chap, at Geneva. What are your plans?"

"If I ever had any, I've forgotten them," said I. "Look here, Little
Pal, shall we join forces as far as--as far as----"

"The turnstile," he finished my broken sentence.

"Where is the turnstile?"

"At the place--whatever it may be--where we get tired of each other.
Isn't that what you meant?"

"According to my present views, that place might be at the other end
of the world. You must remember it was never I who tried to get away
from you. At the Cantine de Proz, I----"

"Don't let's remember to that time. Then, I didn't know that you
were--You. That makes all the difference. You looked as if you might
be nice, but I've learned not to trust first impressions, especially
of men--grown-up men. There are such lots of people one drifts across,
who are not _real_ people at all, but just shells, with little
rattling nuts