e had a guide with him, some peasant or
herdsman probably, as far as the Truebsee Alp; for even in summer the
route was difficult to find. The guide had put him on to the path for
Engelberg, and left him to make his way along the precipitous slopes of
the Pfaffenwand. All this would be discovered when an official inquiry
was made into the accident. In the mean time it was necessary to invest
this stranger with his own identity.

There were two or three well-worn letters in the pocket-book, but they
contained nothing of importance. It seemed true, what the dying man had
said, that there was no link of kinship or friendship binding him
specially to his fellow-men. Roland opened his own pocket-book, and
looked over a letter or two which he had carried about with him, one of
them a childish note from Felix, preferring some simple request. His
passport was there also, and his mother's portrait and those of the
children, over which his eyes brooded with a hungry sorrow in his heart.
He looked at them for the last time. But Felicita's portrait he could
not bring himself to give up. She would be dead to him, and he to her.
In England she would live among her friends as his widow, pitied, and
comforted, and beloved. But what would the coming years bring to him?
All that would remain to him of the past would be a fading photograph
only.

So long he lingered over this mournful conflict that he was at last
aroused from it by the entrance of the landlord, and the mayor and other
officials, who had come to look at the body of the dead. Roland's
pocket-book lay open on the bed, and he was still gazing at the
portraits of his children. He raised his sunburnt face as they came in,
and rose to meet them.

"This traveller," he said, "gave to me his pocket-book as I watched
beside him last night. It is here, containing his passport, a few
letters, and fifty pounds in notes, which he told me to keep, but which
I wish to give to the commune."

"They must be taken charge of," said the mayor; "but we will look over
them first. Did he tell you who he was?"

"The passport discloses that," answered Roland; "he desired only a
decent funeral."

"Ah!" said the mayor, taking out the passport, "an English traveller;
name Roland Sefton; and these letters, and these portraits--they will be
enough for identification."

"He said he had no friends or family in England," pursued Roland, "and
there is no address among his letters. He told me he came