e, and the thought was not an agreeable one. Brunow
caught the fancy too, and turning on me with a smile which I thought not
quite natural, said:

"_A bad omen!_"

We trudged along pretty wearily, for we had made on foot a good
five-and-twenty miles that day, and the country had been extremely
difficult. The mountain road had scarcely been worthy to be called
a road at all, and in the course of it we had had a score or so of
break-back climbs. Brunow had held out with an unexpected stoutness, but
I think another mile of such a road would have left him helpless; and
though I was more innured to personal fatigue than he, I gave half a
grunt and half a groan of comfort at the thought of stretching my legs
in an arm-chair at the village inn. We were both as hungry as we had
a right to be, and finding our feet set upon turf instead of insecure
stones with points all over them, we mustered our forces for a brief
run downhill. The guide, who had done the journey with a stolid
indifference, set up a whoop and raced after us speedily, getting
the better of us, and so we entered the village racing like a trio of
school-boys, Brunow and I shouting to each other and laughing. Some of
the villagers came to their doors and looked with an ox-like kind of
wonder after us, but just then the first open growl of the tempest
sounded, the premature blackness of the evening was split wide open by a
sudden flash, and the rain began to fall as it can only fall in mountain
countries and in the tropics, I suppose the inhabitants simply thought
we were flying from the storm, and, anyway, at the first sign of it they
slammed and fastened their doors, and we raced on, drenched almost to
the skin in the first minute.

Brunow knew the inn, of course, and was recognized immediately on his
arrival. The fat hostess, stolid as she looked, seemed glad to see him;
and her pretty daughter, who looked in the characteristic costume of the
country as if she had just stepped off the stage or was just ready to
step on to it, received him with demure smiles and blushes. He was quite
a lion among the ladies, was Brunow, and I had no doubt he had been
doing some little execution here. In a minute or two, at the landlady's
bidding, we had stripped off our soaked coats and were sitting by a
wood-fire, each in a brief Tyrolean jacket, with lace and silver buttons
all about it--the property, as we found out afterwards, of our host and
his son, who were out just then