iece of metal
by way of a starting-bell, and we set off on our journey to cloudland.

Eagerly looked for, Darjeeling came at last, but alack! no mountains,
only piled-up banks of white clouds. It was bitterly cold, and we were
glad to get out and stamp up to the hotel, where we found great fires
burning in our rooms.

There wasn't much to do in the hotel beyond reading back numbers of
_The Lady's Pictorial_, and I went to bed on Saturday night rather low
in my mind, fearing, after all, I was not to be accounted worthy to
behold the mountains.

Some of the people in the hotel were getting up at 3.30 to go to Tiger
Hill to see the sun rise on Everest. Boggley, the lazy one, wouldn't
hear of going, and when I awoke in the grey dawning stiff with cold,
in spite of a fire and heaps of blankets and rugs, I felt thankful
that I hadn't a strenuous brother. If it had been John, I dare not
think where he would have made me accompany him to in his efforts to
get as near as possible to his beloved mountains. Never shall I forget
the first time he took me to Switzerland to climb. I had never climbed
before--unless you call scrambling on the hills at home climbing--and
I was all eagerness to try till John gave me Whymper's book on Zermatt
to amuse me in the train, and I read of the first ascent of the
Matterhorn and its tragic sequel. It had the effect of reducing me
to a state of abject terror. All through that journey, from Paris to
Lausanne, from Lausanne to Visp, from Visp to Zermatt, horror of the
Matterhorn hung over me like a pall. I even found something sinister
in little Zermatt when we got there--Zermatt that now I love so, with
the rushing, icy river, the cheerful smell of wood smoke, the goats
that in the early morning wake one with the tinkle-tinkle of the bells
through the street, and the quiet-eyed guides that sit on the wall in
the twilight and smoke the pipe of peace.

After dinner, that first night, we walked through the village and
along the winding path that leads up to the Schwarzsee, and gazed at
the mighty peak, so wild, so savage in the pale purple light that
follows the sunset glow--gazed at it in silence, John wrapped in
adoration, I thinking of the men who had gone up this road to their
death.

"Yes," said John, as we turned back, "some very scared men have come
down this road."

If he had known what an exceedingly scared girl was at his side he
wouldn't, I think, have chosen that moment to turn int