aptain pays his own expenses.

But we wander from our text, which is--the Great White Mountain. We are
driving now under its shadow with Mrs Stoutley's party, which, in
addition to the Captain and Miss Gray, already mentioned, includes young
Dr George Lawrence and Lewis, who are on horseback; also Mrs
Stoutley's maid (Mrs Stoutley never travels without a maid), Susan
Quick, who sits beside the Captain; and Gillie White, _alias_ the Spider
and the Imp, who sits beside the driver, making earnest but futile
efforts to draw him into a conversation in English, of which language
the driver knows next to nothing.

But to return: Mrs Stoutley and party are now in the very heart of
scenery the most magnificent; they have penetrated to a great
fountain-head of European waters; they are surrounded by the cliffs, the
gorges, the moraines, and are not far from the snow-slopes and
ice-fields, the couloirs, the seracs, the crevasses, and the
ice-precipices and pinnacles of a great glacial world; but not one of
the party betrays the smallest amount of interest, or expresses the
faintest emotion of surprise, owing to the melancholy fact that all is
shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mist through which a thick fine rain
percolates as if the mountain monarch himself were bewailing their
misfortunes.

"Isn't it provoking?" murmured Mrs Stoutley drawing her shawl closer.

"Very," replied Emma.

"Disgusting!" exclaimed Lewis, who rode at the side of the carriage next
his cousin.

"It might be worse," said Lawrence, with a grim smile.

"Impossible," retorted Lewis.

"Come, Captain, have you no remark to make by way of inspiring a little
hope?" asked Mrs Stoutley.

"Why, never havin' cruised in this region before," answered the Captain,
"my remarks can't be of much value. Hows'ever, there _is_ one idea that
may be said to afford consolation, namely, that this sort o' thing can't
last. I've sailed pretty nigh in all parts of the globe, an' I've
invariably found that bad weather has its limits--that after rain we may
look for sunshine, and after storm, calm."

"How cheering!" said Lewis, as the rain trickled from the point of his
prominent nose.

At that moment Gillie White, happening to cast his eyes upward, beheld a
vision which drew from him an exclamation of wild surprise.

They all looked quickly in the same direction, and there, through a rent
in the watery veil, they beheld a little spot of blue sky, rising into
which