They had been told to be at the station at 5 a.m. and to form themselves into parties of eight, which would just fill a compartment, and as Lois and Ray had made few acquaintances they had some difficulty in making up their complement. They made hasty quest round, however, and Lois discovered two little elderly maiden ladies, waiting timidly in a corner for someone to take them in hand and tell them what to do, which she immediately did, and they wept gratefully. And Ray picked out two nice-looking boys of about his own age, who were standing watching the confusion in aloof amusement,--found they were not engaged, and secured them on the spot. The final two in their carriage were thrust upon them at the last moment when the authorities found their numbers short. They were two young men from Lancashire, who did not speak a word of French--or indeed of anything but broad Lancashire--and they rarely opened their mouths. They were decent quiet fellows, however, and made no trouble. The little ladies had just started on a Swiss trip to which they had been looking forward for years, and the war had made short work of it. “We came to Switzerland once before, when our father was alive. But since he died--well, we have been keeping a school,”--confided one of them to Lois,--“and we have just disposed of it----” “You see these newer subsidised schools are making things hard for the private schools,” said the other, as the train jogged along the side of the lake, still wreathed with swathes of fleecy mist. “And when the chance offered we were glad to retire.” “And we thought it would he so delightful to renew our old memories of Switzerland. We were at Zermatt----” “I was trying to remember where we’d seen you,” said one of the stranger youths, with just enough of a drawl and intonation to betray a trans-Atlantic origin. “We were at Zermatt too. We came across to climb something and they told us Matterhorn was about as good as anything. So we went to Zermatt and made a start on Matterhorn----” “You began at the top,” said Ray. “Matterhorn’s not a thing you can begin at the top. But we started from the Schwarzsee, and that’s 8945 feet up.” “8495,” said his brother. “And you got on all right?” asked Lois, while the little ladies regarded them with silent admiration,--men who had actually been up the Matterhorn, at which they themselves had gazed in fearful rapture from below! “It was all right. We had guides, four of them, very good fellows, and ropes and axes and all the usual things. And they got us through. The only thing that happened to us was a stone in one of the couloirs that came down on my brother’s wrist and smashed his watch, and cut him a bit.” “Had you done any climbing in America?” asked Ray. “Nary! Never climbed anything----” “’Cept stairs!” said his brother. “Plenty stairs, yes, but no mountains to speak of. That’s why we came--to see how it felt.” “And it felt good,” said his brother.