of dull, imitation ideas inside, taken from newspapers,
or borrowed from their friends. Fancy what it would be to see glorious
places with such a companion! It would drive me mad. I determined not
to make aquaintances on this trip; but you--why, I feel now as if it
would be almost insulting you to call you 'an acquaintance.' We
are--oh, I'll take your word! We're 'pals,' and Something big that's
over all meant us to be pals. I don't mind telling you, Man, that I
should miss you, if we parted now."

"We won't part," I said quickly. "We'll jog along together. Have a
cigarette? I'm going to smoke a pipe, because I feel contented."

Between puffs of that pipe (an instrument which I strongly but vainly
recommended to the Boy) I told him of my night drive over the St.
Gothard. As it was his whim to consider names of no importance, I did
not mention that of Jack and Molly Winston, but spoke of them merely
as "my friends."

"Could we do the St. Bernard at night?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes, we could, if we saved ourselves by driving up from here to St.
Rhemy, after dejeuner, otherwise it would mean being on foot all day
and all night too. We could send Joseph, Innocentina, and the animals
on very early to-morrow morning, to the Hospice, where they might rest
till evening. The good monks would give us a meal of some sort about
six, and at seven we could leave the Hospice. There would be an
interval of starry darkness, and then we should have the full moon."

"Splendid to see the Pass by moonlight, after knowing it by day, and
sunset, and dawn! It would be like finding out wonderful new qualities
in your friends, which you'd never guessed they had."

Thus the Boy; and a few moments later the details of our journey were
arranged. Joseph and Innocentina were interrupted in the midst of
ardent attempts to convert one another, to be told what was in store
for them. They did not appear averse to the arrangement, for a slight
pout of the young woman's hardly counted; there was no doubt that a
journey _a deux_ would offer infinite opportunities for religious
disputation.

As for the Little Pal and me, we carried out the first part of our
programme to the letter. Two barrel-shaped nags instead of one took us
to St. Rhemy, the little mountain village whose men are exempt from
conscription, and called, poetically yet literally, "Soldiers of the
Snow." Further up the jewelled way, our little victoria could not
venture, and we trod the