er seen before. Had monsieur seen the source of the Loue? Yes,
monsieur had. Very fine, was it not? Yes, very fine. Which did monsieur
then prefer--the glaciere, or the source? The source, infinitely. _Then_
it was clear monsieur had not seen the glaciere:--he was sure before
that monsieur had not, _now_ it was quite clear, for in all the world
there was nothing like that glaciere. The Loue!--one might rather see
the glaciere once, than live by the source of the Loue all the days of
one's life.

It was now five o'clock, and the train left Pontarlier at half-past
seven. We represented to M. Paget that he really ought to do the twenty
kilometres in two hours and a quarter, which would leave us a quarter of
an hour to arrange our knapsacks and pay the _National_. He promised to
do his best, and certainly the black horse proved himself a most willing
beast. There was one long hill which damped our spirits, and made us
give up the idea of catching the train; and here our driver came to the
rescue with what sounded at first like a promising story--the only one
we extracted from him all through the day--_a propos_ of a
memorial-stone on the road-side, where a man had lately been killed by
two bears; but, when we came to examine into it, the romance vanished,
for the man was a brewer's waggoner with a dray of beer, and the bears
were tame bears, led in a string, which frightened the brewer's horses,
and so the man was killed. Contrary to our expectations and fears, we
did catch the train, and arrived in a thankful frame of mind at
comfortable quarters in Neufchatel.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: _Cruel comme a Morat_ was long a popular saying.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX.

THE SCHAFLOCH, OR TROU-AUX-MOUTONS, NEAR THE LAKE OF THUN.

The next morning, my sisters went one way and I another; they to a
valley in the south-west of Vaud, where our head-quarters were to be
established for some weeks, and I to Soleure, where a Swiss _savant_ had
vaguely told us he believed there was a glaciere to be seen. That town,
however, denied the existence of any approach to such a thing, with a
unanimity which in itself was suspicious, and with a want of imagination
which I had not expected to find. One man I really thought might be
persuaded to know of some cave where there was or might be ice, but
after a quarter of an hour's discussion he finally became immovable on
the negative side. A Frenchman wou