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equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of
chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate man
might venture. He found it easier than it seemed, and came at last
to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no
particular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. He took his
bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out
above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite
distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion. At times
his progress was like clambering along the face of a wall, and
after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge, the
voices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold and
dark about him. But the distant valley with its houses was all the
brighter for that. He came presently to talus, and among the rocks
he noted--for he was an observant man--an unfamiliar fern that
seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. He
picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk, and found it helpful.
About midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge
into the plain and the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he sat
down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from
a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time, resting before
he went on to the houses.
They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole
aspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more
unfamiliar. The greater part of its surface was lush green meadow,
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