“I’m going to make you do exactly what Melchior thinks best,” said his companion, firmly. “And let me tell you, young fellow, there will be times, if you care to go with me, when we shall be very glad to hold each other’s hands: up yonder, for instance, along that shelf, where you can see the sheep.”
He pointed toward where, high up the side of the narrow valley, a group of white-woolled sheep could be seen browsing.
“What, those?” said the lad. “That’s nothing. I thought these mountains and places would be ever so high.”
“Ah! I suppose so,” said Dale dryly. “Why, you young ignoramus—you young puppy, with your eyes not yet half opened—do you know how high those sheep are above where we stand?”
“Those?” said the lad, who had been looking rather contemptuously at everything he had seen since he had been on the Continent. “Perhaps a couple of hundred feet—say three.”
“Three hundred, Saxe? Why, my lad, they are a thousand feet if they are an inch.”
“Two thousand,” said the guide quietly.
“What!” cried the boy. “Then how high is that point just peeping over the hills there, right up the valley?”
He pointed to a dazzling snowy peak which ran up like a roughly shaped, blunted spear head glistening in the morning air.
“Das Dusselhorn,” said the guide. “Hochte spitze? Nein.”