ene, carried the other gun, full
of wondering conjecture what Kennedy could have been doing with it, and
from whence it could have come.

And when Violet reached Eva's room, in which she slept, she could only
say, as they sat locked in a long embrace:--

"Dearest Eva, it is only through Edward that my life has been saved."

Eva had never before heard Violet call her brother by his name, and she
was glad at heart.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

THE ALPEN-GLUHEN.

"And, last of all,
Love, like an Alpine harebell, hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier."
The Princess.

Violet's fluttered nerves and wearied frame rendered it necessary for
the party of English travellers to stay for a few days at Murrem, and
afterwards it was decided that they should all go down to Grindelwald,
and spend there the remainder of the time which they had set apart for
the Swiss tour. The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the
utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference
as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all
endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped,
Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to
keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford.

There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound
together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as
though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. For long
years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at
Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they
glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure. How is it that there can
be such a thing as ennui, or that people ever can be at a loss what to
do? In the morning they took short excursions to the glaciers or the
roots of the great mountains, and Cyril made adventurous expeditions
with his fishing-rod to the mountain-streams. And at evening they sat
in the long twilight in the balcony of their room, while Eva and Violet
sang them sweet, simple English songs, which rang so softly through the
air, that the crowd of guides and porters which always hang about a
Swiss hotel used to gather in the streets to listen, and the English
visitors collected in the garden to catch the familiar tones. Julian
and Kennedy always gave some hours every day to their books, and Cyril,
though he could be persuaded to do little else, spent some of his
u