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He made no answer, but walked off to a little distance, fanning himself with his hat and growling words which I did not catch. After a time I proposed to descend.

“You must be careful as you go down,” he said. “It is much more dangerous to go down steep places than to climb up.”

“I am always prudent,” I answered, and started in advance. I found the descent of the mountain much more pleasant than the ascent. It was positively exhilarating. I jumped from rocks and bluffs eight and ten feet in height, and touched the ground as gently as if I had stepped down but two feet. I ran down steep paths, and, with the aid of my alpenstock, stopped myself in an instant. I was careful to avoid dangerous places, but the runs and jumps I made were such as no man had ever made before upon that mountain-side. Once only I heard my companion’s voice.

“You’ll break your —- neck!” he yelled.

“Never fear!” I called back, and soon left him far above.

When I reached the bottom I would have waited for him, but my activity had warmed me up, and as a cool evening breeze was beginning to blow I thought it better not to stop and take cold. Half an hour after my arrival at the hotel I came down to the court, cool, fresh, and dressed for dinner, and just in time to meet the Alpine man as he entered, hot, dusty, and growling.

“Excuse me for not waiting for you,” I said; but without stopping to hear my reason, he muttered something about waiting in a place where no one would care to stay, and passed into the house.

There was no doubt that what I had done gratified my pique and tickled my vanity.

“I think now,” I said, when I related the matter to my wife, “that he will scarcely say that I am not up to that sort of thing.”

“I am not sure,” she answered, “that it was exactly fair. He did not know how you were assisted.”

“It was fair enough,” I said. “He is enabled to climb well by the inherited vigor of his constitution and by his training. He did not tell me what methods of exercise he used to get those great muscles upon his legs. I am enabled to climb by the exercise of my intellect. My method is my business and his method is his business. It is all perfectly fair.”

Still she persisted:

“He thought that you climbed with your legs, and not with your head.”

And now, after this long digression, necessary to explain how a middle-aged couple of slight pedestrian ability, and loaded with a heavy knapsack and basket, should have started out on a rough walk and climb, fourteen miles in all, we will return to ourselves, standing on the little bluff and gazing out upon the sunset view. When the sky began to fade a little we turned from it and prepared to go back to the town.

“Where is the basket?” I said.

“I left it right here,” answered my wife. “I unscrewed the machine and it lay perfectly flat.”

“Did you afterward take out the bottles?” I asked, seeing them lying on the grass.

“Yes, I believe I did. I had to take out yours in order to get at mine.”

“Then,” said I, after looking all about the grassy patch on which we stood, “I am afraid you did not entirely unscrew the instrument, and that when the weight of the bottles was removed the basket gently rose into the air.”

“It may be so,” she said, lugubriously. “The basket was behind me as I drank my wine.”

“I believe that is just what has happened,” I said. “Look up there! I vow that is our basket!”

I pulled out my field-glass and directed it at a little speck high above our heads. It was the basket floating high in the air. I gave the glass to my wife to look, but she did not want to use it.