meet a single traveller from day-dawn till night. Perhaps
he felt little regret at this, leaving him, as it did, more time for
those daydreams in which he loved to revel. Now and then some giant
mountain glittering in the sun, or some dark gorge thousands of feet
below him, would chase away his revery, and leave him for a time in
a half-bewildered and wondering astonishment; but his thoughts soon
resumed their old track, and he would plod along, staff in hand, as
before.

Walking from before daybreak to a late hour of the evening, Frank
frequently accomplished in his day's journey as many miles as the
traveller who, by post, only spent the few hours of mid-day on the road;
in fact, he might have thus measured his speed, had he been less wrapped
up in his own fancies, since, for several days, a caleche, drawn by
three post-horses, had regularly passed him on the road, and always
about the same hour.

Frank saw nothing of this; and when on a bright and frosty day he began
the ascent of the Arlberg, he little knew that the carriage, about half
a mile in front, had been his travelling companion for the past week.
Disdaining to follow the winding high-road, Frank ascended by those
foot-tracks which gain upon the zig-zags, and thus soon was miles in
advance of the caleche. At last he reached the half-way point of ascent,
and was glad to rest himself for a few minutes on one of the benches
which German thoughtfulness for the wayfarer never neglects to place
in suitable spots. A low parapet of a couple of feet separated the road
from a deep and almost perpendicular precipice, at the foot of which,
above two thousand feet beneath, stood the village of Stuben. There was
the little chapel in which he had his morning's mass, there the
little Platz, where he had seen the post-horses getting ready for the
travellers; there, too, the little fountain, covered with a shed of
straw, and glistening with many an icicle in the bright sun. The very
voices of the people reached him where he sat; and the sounds of a
street-organ floated upwards through the still atmosphere. It was a
scene of peaceful isolation such as would have pleased Nelly's fancy. It
was like one of those "Dorf s" she herself had often carved to amuse a
winter's evening, and Frank's eyes filled up as he thought of her and of
home.

The sound of feet upon the snow suddenly roused him, and, on looking
round, Frank saw a traveller slowly coming up the pass. His dress at
o