sketch of
me, curled up in sleeping-sack and tent, toasting my toes before a
fire of twigs, and eating tinned soup, steaming hot, made me long to
lose myself immediately. But, alas! a peasant child near Piedimulera
is basking at this moment in my woolly sack, and battening on my
Instantaneous Breakfasts."

"Don't think of them," said the Boy. "That way madness lies. A chapter
in my book shall be called, 'How to be Happy though Freezing.'"

"What would be your definition of the state, precisely?"

"Being with Somebody you--like."

My temperature bounded up several degrees, thanks to these amends, but
our sole comfort was in each other, since Joseph had no hope to give.
At this moment he parted the mist-curtain to remark that he could find
no traces of a path or landmark of any kind.

Hours dragged on, and we were still wandering aimlessly, as one
wanders in a troubled dream. We were chilled to the bone, and as it
was by this time late in the afternoon, I began to fear that we should
have to spend the night on the mountain-side. Revard was wreaking
vengeance upon us for taking his name in vain. We had made naught of
him as a mountain; now he was showing us that, were he sixteen
thousand feet high instead of four, he could scarcely put us to more
serious inconvenience.

I was growing gravely anxious about the Boy, though the bitter cold
and great fatigue had not quenched his spirit, when the smell of
cattle and the muffled sound of human voices put life into the chill,
dead body of the mist. A house loomed before us, and I sprang to the
comforting conclusion that we had stumbled upon one of the outlying
offices of the hotel, but an instant showed me my mistake. The low
building was a rough stone chalet with two or three cowherds outside
the door, and these men stared in surprise and curiosity at our
ghostly party.

"Are we far from the hotel?" I asked in French, but no gleam of
understanding lightened their faces; and it was not until Joseph had
addressed them in the most extraordinary patois I had ever heard, that
they showed signs of intelligence. "Hoo-a-long, hoo-a-long, walla-ha?"
he remarked, or words to that effect.

"Squall-a-doo, soo-a-lone, bolla-hang," returned one of the men,
suddenly wound up to gesticulate with violence.

"He says that the hotel is about half an hour's walk from here,"
Joseph explained to me, looking wistful. And my own feelings gave me
the clue to that look's significance.

"Tha