spirits who consider--and justly
so--the ascent to the summit of Mont Blanc, or Monte Rosa, or the
Matterhorn, a feat; the men who perform this feat it may be, two or
three times a week--as often as you choose to call them to it, in fact--
and think nothing of it; the men whose profession it is to risk their
lives every summer from day to day for a few francs; who have become so
inured to danger that they have grown quite familiar with it, insomuch
that some of the reckless blades among them treat it now and then with
contempt, and pay the penalty of such conduct with their lives.

Sinking into a couch in her private sitting-room, Mrs Stoutley resigned
herself to Susan's care, and, while she was having her boots taken off,
said with a sigh:--

"Well, here we are at last. What do you think of Chamouni, Susan?"

"Rather a wet place, ma'am; ain't it?"

With a languid smile, Mrs Stoutley admitted that it was, but added, by
way of encouragement that it was not always so. To which Susan replied
that she was glad to hear it, so she was, as nothink depressed her
spirits so much as wet and clouds, and gloom.

Susan was a pretty girl of sixteen, tall, as well as very sedate and
womanly, for her age. Having been born in one of the midland counties,
of poor, though remarkably honest, parents, who had received no
education themselves, and therefore held it to be quite unnecessary to
bestow anything so useless on their daughter, she was, until very
recently, as ignorant of all beyond the circle of her father's homestead
as the daughter of the man in the moon--supposing no compulsory
education-act to be in operation in the orb of night. Having passed
through them, she now knew of the existence of France and Switzerland,
but she was quite in the dark as to the position of these two countries
with respect to the rest of the world, and would probably have regarded
them as one and the same if their boundary-line had not been somewhat
deeply impressed upon her by the ungallant manner in which the Customs
officials examined the contents of her modest little portmanteau in
search, as Gillie gave her to understand, of tobacco.

Mrs Stoutley had particularly small feet, a circumstance which might
have induced her, more than other ladies, to wear easy boots; but owing
to some unaccountable perversity of mental constitution, she deemed this
a good reason for having her boots made unusually tight. The removal of
these, therefore, affo