carriage. The train had long passed Hornberg, and far below the streams
tumbled in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of him, dome
upon dome of wooded mountain stood against the sky. It was October, and
the air was cool and sharp, woodsmoke and damp moss exquisitely mingled
in it with the subtle odours of the pines. Overhead, between the tips of
the highest firs, he saw the first stars peeping, and the sky was a
clean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the colour all these memories
clothed themselves with in his mind.

He leaned back in his corner and sighed. He was a heavy man, and he had
not known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much to
move him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the dreams of
God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the scum that
gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly
died the death.

He came back into this little neglected pocket of the years, where so
much fine gold had collected and lain undisturbed, with all his
semispiritual emotions aquiver; and, as he watched the mountain-tops
come nearer, and smelt the forgotten odours of his boyhood, something
melted on the surface of his soul and left him sensitive to a degree he
had not known since, thirty years before, he had lived here with his
dreams, his conflicts, and his youthful suffering.

A thrill ran through him as the train stopped with a jolt at a tiny
station and he saw the name in large black lettering on the grey stone
building, and below it, the number of metres it stood above the level of
the sea.

"The highest point on the line!" he exclaimed. "How well I remember