“Next morning, he was off at four o’clock, leaving me to spend the day quietly in the valley. I was disturbed but once more before rising; this time by a herd of goats, who scrambled along under my windows, with bells tingling merrily enough.
“In the course of the forenoon, I strolled away, book in hand, following the course of the Arve for a little while, and then striking off at right angles, up the banks of a small brook, which joins the larger stream just above the village.
“The air was soft and sweet with summer sunlight and the breath of the silent forests, reaching from my feet, higher and higher, until the front rank looked on those desolate, glittering fields of snow that crown Mount Blanc.
“Beside the brook the velvety turf was dotted with wild forget-me-nots and pansies, growing there as peacefully as if they were not in the very track of last year’s avalanche.
“At length I came to a spot where the brook had in ages past strewn its own path with fragments of huge rocks, which it had loosened and thrown down from some far-off height, where the foot of man never trod.
“One gigantic bowlder lay completely across the original bed of the stream, and rose like a wall beside the water, that turned out of its way, and ran off with a good-natured laugh.
“The sun here lay warm and bright, just counteracting the chill breeze that came from the glaciers through the narrow gorge. I gathered a few dry sticks, kindled a fire, merely for company, and nestled comfortably down into an easy corner to read the rocks, the brook, the sky, and, if there were time left, my book, which, if I remember rightly, was ‘Redgauntlet.’
“How long I sat there I cannot tell. It must have been two or three hours, for it was past noon when I looked at my watch, threw the smouldering firebrands into the brook, and rose to return to the hotel.
“As I did so, I noticed half a dozen footsteps in the steep, sandy bank that formed the side of the ravine at this point. It suddenly occurred to me that I had read in my guide-book, while I was sitting in my own room, six months before, of a certain waterfall, which, from the description, must surely be on this brook. Yes, I recollected the base of the zig-zag path, that we had seen as we rode along the valley, on our way from Tête Noire, late the preceding afternoon.
“I was feeling much refreshed and rested by my siesta, and, by a short cut up over this embankment, I could doubtless strike that path after a three minutes’ scramble, as some one had evidently done before me.