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“How far now?” said Joe, lying on his back with his coat off, his shirt- sleeves turned up, his collar off, and his braces slack.

“Just about there,” said Magnus minor.

He spoke figuratively, of course. They were a quarter of the way up, perhaps.

“I don’t believe this beast is what-you-may-call-him at all. It strikes me we ought to have turned to the–you know.”

“It looks like him,” said Magnus. “Anyhow, it’ll do for him.”

“I’d like to do for him,” growled Joe.

They went on presently, in shocking tempers, both of them. They loathed that mountain, and yet neither liked to propose to go back. That is the way in which a good many mountains are climbed.

Magnus got riled with Joe for not giving in–he was the elder, and it was his business to begin. Joe, on the other hand, never thought so ill of Magnus as when he saw him pegging up twenty yards ahead, never giving him (Joe) time to catch up. He made faces at him behind his back, and tried to think of all the caddish things he had done since he came to the school. But it was no good. As sure as ever Joe tried artfully to cut a corner or “put it on” for a yard or two, Magnus, on ahead, cut a corner and put it on too.

When Magnus presently, having improved his lead, sat down to rest, Joe made sure he had caught his man at last. But–would you believe it?– just as he approached the place, with every show of friendship, announcing that he had something particular to say, Magnus got up and went on again, leaving poor Joe not only still in the rear, but without time even for a rest.

All this astonishing activity, as I said, was the result, not of energy, but of bad temper. The worse their tempers became the greater the pace, and the greater the pace the nearer the top of that interminable ridge. Towards the end it was uncommonly like running. Magnus would have given worlds to venture to look behind and see how the idiot below was fagging; and Joe would have given a lot to see the lout above come a cropper and smash his leg. It wants a pretty hot friendship to stand the test of a mountain-side.

At last (without a suspicion of what o’clock it was, or how far they had come), Magnus actually stopped and lay down.

“Serves him right,” said Joe, triumphantly, running with all his might to take advantage of his chance. Alas! when he got up to his friend, he discovered that after all he was not dead-beat, or wounded, or ill.

The reason he had stopped was that he had got to the top.

As was natural, as soon as this agreeable and amazing discovery was made, Magnus minor and my brother Joe forgot their rancour and loved one another again with a mighty affection. Their own brothers weren’t in it.

“Good old Joey!” cried Magnus, as my brother lay on the turf beside him; “crowd in, old hoss–lots of room!”

“Good old Magny!” responded Joe; “what a day we’re having!”

Presently they condescended to look about them. They were on a sharp ridge, one side of which sloped down into the valley from which they had ascended, the other looked out on an uninterrupted prospect of cloud and mist.

“This isn’t what’s-his-name at all,” said Joe. “There’s a tuck shop on the top of it–there’s none here.”

“That chap was right,” said Magnus. “That must be Snowdon over there– we’ve missed him.”

“Horrid bore,” said Joe, who, however, regretted the mountain less than the tuck shop.

The afternoon was changing. The clouds were beginning to sweep up from the other side and begriming the sky which had been so ruthlessly clear all the morning.

All of a sudden the mist below them parted, and disclosed through a frame of cloud a great cauldron of rock yawning at their feet, at the bottom of which–as it seemed, miles below–lay a black lake. It was a scene Dante could have described better than I.