144 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



temperance hotels and the villas faded into the 

 mist behind, and we were alone. 



In the partial shelter of a soaked sycamore the 

 usual, the inevitable, process of altering the girths 

 was carried out, while the drips flopped suddenly 

 on our noses or the backs of our necks, with an 

 untiring sense of humour, and the tips to the 

 ostlers were repented of with more than usual 

 fervour. 



To visit the Pass of Llanberis in such weather 

 was an act as unworthy as calling on a stranger 

 during a spring cleaning. Its mountains were 

 dressing-gowned in ragged cloud, its lake turned 

 to a slab of slate, its vista bleared by the cold, 

 thick rain ; but it had still a murky nobility, and 

 streams, long silent, cast themselves from its 

 parapets, and gauged with white streaks the depth 

 of precipice and jutting crag. Upwards in stream- 

 ing gradients rose the road, along the slanting 

 floor of the valley — if indeed the name of valley is 

 not too tender for that rent in the dark heart of 

 the mountain, with its sides strewn with wreckage 



