He loved the snow forests, and the snow-girt streams, and the ice cathedrals, and the great firs patient beneath their snow-burden.

He loved the frozen waterfalls, and the costly diamonds in the snow.

He knew, too, where the flowers nestled in their white nursery.

He was, indeed, an authority on Alpine botany.
The same tender hands which plucked the flowers in the spring-time, dissected them and laid them bare beneath the microscope.

But he did not love them the less for that.
Were these pursuits a comfort to him?
Did they help him to forget that there was a time when he, too, was burning with ambition to distinguish himself, and be one of the marked men of the age?
Who could say?
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