His stimulus was not that of the single-minded, level-headed mountaineer; in his romantic exaltation he was capable of hailing the very perils as so many more means of grace in the sight of Mrs.Lascelles; yet without doubt he would have repudiated any such incentive, and that in all the sincerity of his simple heart.

He did not know himself as I knew him.
My fears were soon confirmed.

Returning to the glass veranda, after the stock breakfast of the Swiss hotel, with its horseshoe rolls and fabricated honey, I found the telescope the centre of an ominous crowd, on whose fringe hovered my new friend the mountaineer.
"We were wrong," he muttered to me.

"Some fools are up there, after all." "How many ?" I asked quickly.
"I don't know.

There's no getting near the telescope now, and won't be till the clouds blot them out altogether." I looked out at the Matterhorn.