emely
uncomfortable small seat by a draughty door to prove to himself that he
wasn't in the least tired.

He began to feel rather better after the coffee at Basle, and though he
was hardly the kind of person to take much interest in mere scenery, the
small Swiss villages, with their high pink or blue clock-faced churches
made him wish he could pack them into a box, with a slice of green
mountain behind, and send them to Peter to play with.

After Landeck he smelt the snows, and challenged successfully the whole
shivering carriage on the subject of an open window. The snows reminded
Winn in a jolly way of Kashmir and nights spent alone on dizzy heights
in a Dak bungalow.

The valleys ceased slowly to breathe, the dull autumn coloring sank into
the whiteness of a dream. The mountains rose up on all sides, wave upon
wave of frozen foam, aiming steadily at the high, clear skies. The
half-light of the failing day covered the earth with a veil of silver
and retreating gold.

The valleys passed into silence, freezing, whispering silence. The moon
rose mysteriously behind a line of black fir-trees, sending shafts of
blue light into the hollow cup of mountain gorges. It was a poet's
world, Blake or Shelley could have made it, it was too cold for Keats.
Winn had not read these poets. It reminded him of a particularly good
chamois hunt, in which he had bagged a splendid fellow, after four
hours' hard climbing and stalking. The mountains receded a little, and
everything became part of a white hollow filled with black fir-trees,
and beyond the fir-trees a blue lake as blue as an Indian moonstone, and
then one by one, with the unexpectedness of a flight of glow-worms,
sparkled the serried ranks of the hotels. Out they flashed, breaking up
the mystery, defying the mountains, as insistent and strident as life.

The train stopped, and its contents spilled themselves out a little
uncertainly and stiffly on the platform. Instantly the cold caught them,
not the insidious, subtle cold of lower worlds, but the fresh, brusk
buffet of the Alps. It caught them by the throat and chest, it tingled
in ears and noses; there was no menace in it, and no weakness. It was as
compulsory as a policeman in a street fight.

Winn had just stepped aside to allow a clamorous lady to take possession
of his porter when he saw a man struggle into the light under a
lamp-post; he was carrying something very carefully in his arms.

Winn could not immediatel