I04 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



been turned up when they were made" — -was an 

 idle effort of memory. It was half an hour before 

 our guide paused again ; the short cut, and we 

 with-it, had climbed a moraine of boulders, and 

 rejoined the orthodox path, and a rest came as an 

 unlooked-for mercy. 



"Ferry deep," said Griffith Roberts, leaving the 

 path and moving cautiously towards a low grassy 

 rampart, behind which the mist steamed billow-- 

 ing up. 



We knelt with our elbows on the rampart, and 

 saw chaos heaped in grey vapour below — chaos 

 stirred as if with a ladle, and weltering slow and 

 mysterious in the perfect quiet of the air. As we 

 watched, some unseen force from below tore an 

 upward opening through the mist, and our nerves 

 dived tingling down it to where, at the bottom of 

 all things, a little leaden lake lay dead and sombre. 

 The cliff on which we were kneeling ran with 

 a tremendous horse -shoe curve right up to the 

 highest peak of Snowdon, a point darkly visible 

 in the greyness, and depressingly remote. Could 



