reen and gold;
gloriously rugged, steeply sloping pasture alps, dotted with
picturesquely carved chalets, weatherworn by sun and rain to a rich,
warm brown; higher up, the sehn hutte--the summer farmsteads of the
peasants, round and about which graze gentle, soft-faced cows, each
bearing its sweet-toned, musical bell. Again, higher still, grey crag
and lightning-blasted granite, bare, repellant, and strange; upward
still, and in nook and cranny patches of a dingy white, like the
sweepings up of a great hailstorm; another thousand feet up, and the
aching eyes dazzled by peak, fold, cushion, and plain of white--the
eternal ice; and, above all, the glorious sun beaming down, melting from
the snows a million tiny rivers, which whisper and sing as they carve
channels for their courses and meet and coalesce to flow amicably down,
or quarrel and rage and rush together, till, with a mighty, echoing
roar, they plunge headlong down the rift in some mighty glacier, flow on
for miles, and reappear at the foot turbid, milky, and laden with stone,
to hurry headlong to their purification in the lovely lake below.

Two hundred feet above that lake, on a broad shelf, stood the Hotel des
Cerfs, a magnified chalet, and in the wooden balcony, leaning upon the
carved rail, and gazing at the wondrous view across lake and meadow, up
and away to the snow-covered mountains till they blended with the fleecy
clouds, stood Myra Jerrold and Edie Perrin--cousins by birth, sisters by
habit--revelling in their first visit to the land of ice peak, valley,
and lake.

"I could stand here, I think, forever, and never tire of drinking in the
beauties of such a scene, Edie. It makes me so happy; and yet there are
moments when the tears come into my eyes, and I feel sad."

"Yes, I know, dear," replied Edie. "That's when you want your lunch or
dinner. One feels faint."

"How can you be so absurd?" cried Myra half reproachfully.

"Then it's indigestion, from eating old goat."

"Edie!"

"It is, dear," said the merry, fair-haired girl, swinging her straw hat
by one string over the balcony. "I'm sure they save up the goats when
they're too old to give any milk, to cook up for the visitors, and then
they call it chamois. I wish Aunt Jerrold had been here to have some of
that dish last night. I say, she wants to know when we are coming back
to Bourne Square."

"I don't know," said Myra thoughtfully. "I am in no hurry. It is very
beautiful here."