rney and the nightly hotel on
a piece of paper, and made our course so plain that we should never be
able to get lost without high-priced outside help.

I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was going to Lausanne,
and then we went to bed, after laying out the walking-costumes and
putting them into condition for instant occupation in the morning.

However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A.M., it looked so much
like rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy for the first third of the
journey. For two or three hours we jogged along the level road which
skirts the beautiful lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of
watery expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us, veiled in
a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything but
the nearest objects. We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas,
and away from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy; but the
driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather in and seemed
to like it. We had the road to ourselves, and I never had a pleasanter
excursion.

The weather began to clear while we were driving up a valley called the
Kienthal, and presently a vast black cloud-bank in front of us dissolved
away and uncurtained the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of
the Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-taking surprise; for we had not
supposed there was anything behind that low-hung blanket of sable cloud
but level valley. What we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of
sky away aloft there, were really patches of the Blumis's snowy crest
caught through shredded rents in the drifting pall of vapor.

We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver ought to have dined
there, too, but he would not have had time to dine and get drunk
both, so he gave his mind to making a masterpiece of the latter, and
succeeded. A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had been
taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left, just ahead of us,
it was plain that their driver was as drunk as ours, and as happy
and good-natured, too, which was saying a good deal. These rascals
overflowed with attentions and information for their guests, and with
brotherly love for each other. They tied their reins, and took off
their coats and hats, so that they might be able to give unencumbered
attention to conversation and to the gestures necessary for its
illustration.

The road was smooth; it led up and over and down a co