TO PARTENKIRCHEN. 233 



though the light, and gaiety, and hearty laughter ema- 

 nated from him j as though he were the sun whose rosy 

 presence thawed all into merriment. And, for aught I 

 know to the contrary, it may have been so. He was a 

 right jolly fellow, as I afterwards experienced j 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 an- 

 other. 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. 

 Lono- 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 some- 

 thing, insist on its being a real sword, or horse, or what- 

 ever it is they wish for, and not a mere make-believe ! They 



