We shall want our best wits and our best swordsmanship if we are to cope with him." Tom's eyes sparkled with excitement and joy.
"And is the mountain pass the only way of getting into Italy, for I have heard that Savoy lies in that land ?" said Tom.
"Ay; Italy has had its strange vicissitudes of fortune, and has been divided and redivided into duchies and kingdoms, till it needs a clever scholar to tell her history aright.

But it is enough for our purpose that Savoy lies just beneath those grim mountains which we must scale; and that for the present no other entrance is possible." "But there are other ways then ?" "Why, yes, we could at other times go by sea; but now that the Spaniards are seeking to win back the rock of Gibraltar, which we have lately reft from them, and which Marlborough says must never be yielded up again, we cannot safely try that way; for we might well fall into the hands of some Spanish vessel, and languish, unknown and uncared for, in Spanish dungeons.

We cannot travel through France, and reach it from the shores of Genoa; because it were too great peril for Englishmen to ride through the dominions of the French monarch.

So we must needs land at some friendly Dutch port, and ride through their country, and so into Westphalia, and thence to these mountain regions which cut us off from our destination.
"Have you ever seen snow mountains, Tom, towering to the very skies in virgin whiteness, with the rivers of ice, miles in width, flowing silently down their rocky sides?
It is a strange and marvellous sight when viewed for the first time.

I could find it in my heart to wish I stood in your shoes, that all these new things might be seen and heard for the first time!" "And I would that I knew more of these strange lands, and the ways of the people there," answered Tom; "for I fear me lest mine ignorance may lead us into peril.