them, when
they have got a mountain to scale."

A cry, "He is there!" and "Do you see him?" burst from the throats of
men surrounding Agostino.

Looking up to the mountain's top, they had perceived the figure of
one who stood with folded arms, sufficiently near for the person of an
expected friend to be descried. They waved their hats, and Carlo
shot ahead. The others trod after him more deliberately, but in glad
excitement, speculating on the time which this sixth member of the
party, who were engaged to assemble at a certain hour of the morning
upon yonder height, had taken to reach the spot from Omegna, or Orta,
or Pella, and rejoicing that his health should be so stout in despite of
his wasting labours under city smoke.

"Yes, health!" said Agostino. "Is it health, do you think? It's the
heart of the man! and a heart with a mill-stone about it--a heart to
breed a country from! There stands the man who has faith in Italy,
though she has been lying like a corpse for centuries. God bless him! He
has no other comfort. Viva l'Italia!"

The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the eminence
overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the air
sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he, until
Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene stedfastly,
with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured long exile,
and finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange,
beloved, visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the
far-spreading hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the
gleam of the distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an
airy host, mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of
a flight toward the underlying purple land.

CHAPTER II

He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood
defined against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the
student's aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the
straining of the buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one who
waited and listened, which distinguished his figure, detracted from the
promise of other than contemplative energy, until his eyes were fairly
seen and felt. That is, until the observer became aware that those soft
and large dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In them lay no
abstracted student's languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but
a quiet grappli