258 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



I afterwards experienced ; and when, some weeks later, 

 I lay day after day sick and lonely in bed, I was as 

 glad to see him enter my room as when a sunbeam 

 looked in through the window-pane. 



But the house is full : there is not a bed to be had 

 for any money, or, what would weigh still more with 

 our worthy landlord, not even for the sake of obliging 

 another. There is a fair tomorrow, and many are the 

 comers from the neighbouring villages ; so that the 

 lack of house-room is as great as when independent 

 electors throng to support independent candidates at 

 a small country town in England. 



After some vain applications elsewhere, we at length 

 found a lodging, and the following morning I could 

 not but think how lucky it was the inn had been full; 

 for on peeping out of the window, there stood before 

 me the great grey mountains of which the Zug Spitz 

 is the last and highest peak. The sky was bright and 

 blue, and cutting against it the sharp, hard outline of 

 the cold stony ridge ; nor could the sunbeams even, 

 as they played upon that rock's imperturbable face, 

 impart to it life or warmth. Our little lattice was the 

 frame to the picture, and I soon roused my fellow- 

 travellers to come and see what we, in our humble 

 back room, were possessors of. Long after the others 

 had left the window I was still looking out; and I 

 gazed and gazed, in order to be quite assured that I 

 was really among the high mountains. 



How often do we hear children, when asking for 

 something, insist on its being a real sword, or horse, 



