"
The little gentleman examined the other with some alarm; but just now
the teams commenced the ascent of a steep hill, and as he beheld the
guard a little way in advance, he forgot the other's earnestness, and
raised his lunette.
"Andy," he said, "by my great ancestry! I have seen that man before.
Look! the height, the style, the carriage, are familiar. Who is he?"
His co-voyageur was without curiosity; the former pallidness and
silentness resumed their dominion over him, and the lesser gentleman
settled moodily back to his newspaper.
No word was interchanged for several hours. They passed through shaggy
glens, under toppled towers and battlements, by squalid villages, and
within the sound of dashing streams. If they descended ever, it was to
gain breath for a longer ascent; for now the mountain snows were above
them on either side, and the Alps rose sublimely impassable in front.
The hawks careened beneath them; the chamois above dared not look down
for dizziness, and Hugenot said, at Ariola, that they were taking lunch
in a balloon. The manner of Mr. Plade now altered marvellously. It might
have been his breakfast that gave him spirit and speech; he sang a
merry, bad song, which the rocks echoed back, and all the goitred women
at the roadside stopped with their pack burdens to listen.
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