The road—known at this point as “Les Pontis”—here formed a mere ledge as it wound round a lateral ravine—lying at right angles to the gorge—a mere shelf scooped along the face of the rock. On the inner side the cliff shot up to a great height overhead on the outer side—space. Looking out over the somewhat rickety rail the tops of the highest trees seemed a long way beneath. Twelve feet of roadway and the mule persisting in walking near the edge. No wonder the old lady preferred her feet to the saddle.
Mere pigmies they looked, wending their way along the soaring face of the huge cliffs. Now and then the road would dive into a gallery or short tunnel, lighted here and there by a rough loophole—by putting one’s head out of which a glance at the unbroken sweep of the cliff above and below conveyed some idea as to the magnitude of the undertaking.
“A marvellous piece of engineering,” pronounced the General, looking about him critically. “Bless my soul! this bit of road alone is worth coming any distance to see.”
Philip and Alma had managed to get on ahead again.
“Oh, look!” cried the latter, excitedly. “Look—look! There’s a bunch of edelweiss, I declare!”
He followed her glance. Some twelve feet overhead grew a few mud-coloured blossoms. The rock sloped here, and the plant had found root in a cranny filled up with dust.
“No; don’t try it! It’s too risky, you may hurt yourself,” went on Alma, in a disappointed tone. “We must give them up, I suppose.”
But this was not Philip’s idea. He went at the steep rock bank as though storming a breach. There was nothing to hold on to; but the impetus of his spring and the height of his stature combined carried him within reach of the edelweiss. Then he slid back amid a cloud of dust and shale, barking his shins excruciatingly, but grasping in his fist four of the mud-coloured blossoms.
“Are you hurt?” cried Alma, her eyes dilating. “You should not have tried it. I told you not to try it.”
“Hurt? Not a bit! Here are the edelweiss flowers though.” And in the delighted look which came into Alma’s eyes as she took them, he felt that he would have been amply rewarded for a dozen similar troubles. But just then a whimsical association of ideas brought back to his mind the absurd postscript to that letter which had so sorely perturbed him. “Be sure you send me a big bunch of ‘adleweis’ from the top of the Matterhorn”; and the recollection jarred horribly as he contrasted the writer of that execrable epistle, and the glorious refined beauty of this girl who stood here alone with him, so appropriately framed in this entrancing scene of Nature’s grandeur.