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I stood silent, amazed, aghast. There was in me no speech, nor reason. Yet I had the sense to be silent, lest I should say something maladroit.

A confidential servant brought a despatch. The Count impatiently flung it open, glanced at it, then read it carefully twice. He seemed much struck with the contents.

“I am summoned to Milan,” he said, “and upon the instant. I shall yet overtake my sister. May I ask Monsieur to have the goodness to await me here that I may receive his explanations? I shall return immediately.”

“You may depend that I shall wait,” I said.

The Count bowed, and sprang upon the horse which his servant had saddled for him.

But the Count did not immediately return, and we waited in vain. No letter came to me. No communication to the manager of the hostel. The Count had simply ridden out of sight over the pass through which the Thal wind brought the fog-spume. He had melted like the mist, and, so far as we were concerned, there was an end. We waited here till the second snow fell, hardened, and formed its sleighing crust.

Then we went, for some society to Henry, over to the mountain village of Bergsdorf, which strings itself along the hillside above the River Inn.

Bergsdorf is no more than a village in itself, but, being the chief place of its neighbourhood, it supports enough municipal and other dignitaries to set up an Imperial Court. Never was such wisdom–never such pompous solemnity. The Burgomeister of Bergsdorf was a great elephant of a man. He went abroad radiating self-importance. He perspired wisdom on the coldest day. The other officials imitated the Burgomeister in so far as their corporeal condition allowed. The cure only was excepted. He was a thin, spare man with an ascetic face and a great talent for languages. One day during service he asked a mother to carry out a crying child, making the request in eight languages. Yet the mother failed to understand till the limping old apparator led her out by the arm.

There is no doubt that the humours of Bergsdorf lightened our spirits and cheered our waiting; for it is my experience that a young man is easily amused with new, bright, and stirring things even when he is in love.

And what amused us most was that excellent sport–now well known to the world, but then practised only in the mountain villages–the species of adventure which has come to be called “tobogganing.” I fell heir in a mysterious fashion to a genuine Canadian toboggan, curled and buffalo-robed at the front, flat all the way beneath; and upon this, with Henry on one of the ordinary sleds with runners of steel, we spent many a merry day.

There was a good run down the road to the post village beneath; another, excellent, down a neighbouring pass. But the best run of all started from high up on the hillside, crossed the village street, and undulated down the hillside pastures to the frozen Inn river below–a splendid course of two miles in all. But as a matter of precaution it was strictly forbidden ever to be used–at least in that part of it which crossed the village street. For such projectiles as laden toboggans, passing across the trunk line of the village traffic at an average rate of a mile a minute, were hardly less dangerous than cannon-balls, and of much more erratic flight.

Nevertheless, there was seldom a night when we did not risk all the penalties which existed in the city of Bergsdorf, by defying all powers and regulations whatsoever and running the hill-course in the teeth of danger.

I remember one clear, starlight night with the snow casting up just enough pallid light to see by. Half a dozen of us–Henry and myself, a young Swiss doctor newly diplomaed, the adventurous advocate of the place, and several others–went up to make our nightly venture. We gave half a minute’s law to the first starter, and then followed on. I was placed first, mainly because of the excellence of my Canadian iceship. As I drew away, the snow sped beneath; the exhilarating madness of the ride entered into my blood. I whooped with sheer delight…. There was a curve or two in the road, and at the critical moment, by shifting the weight of my body and just touching the snow with the point of the short iron-shod stick I held in my hand, the toboggan span round the curve with the delicious clean cut of a skate. It seemed only a moment, and already I was approaching the critical part of my journey. The stray oil-lights of the village street began to waver irregularly here and there beneath me. I saw the black gap in the houses through which I must go. I listened for the creaking runners of the great Valtelline wine-sledges which constituted the main danger. All was silent and safe. But just as I drew a long breath, and settled for the delicious rise over the piled snow of the street and the succeeding plunge down to the Inn, a vast bulk heaved itself into the seaway, like some lost monster of a Megatherium retreating to the swamps to couch itself ere morning light.