“That is only the pretext,” said Ray. “Austria wants to stretch herself down south. In fact, I suppose, what she really wants is to get to the sea, and Servia lies in her way.” “If all men lived among the mountains they would learn a great many things you never learn down below there. I think one is nearer God up here, Herr and Fräulein.” “I’m sure of it,” said Lois. “But even the mountains have heard the sound of fighting,” said Ray, to draw him on. “If the men from below wanted to take our rights from us we would fight again of course. But they are not likely to come up here, are they, Herr?” “Not up here, I should say. The trouble is, you see, that if Austria attacks Servia, Russia will probably intervene, and then Germany will come in, and so France, and possibly Great Britain. We hope not, but one can never tell.” “Herrgott! That sounds bad,” and the rough hand and big clasp-knife, which had been mechanically feeding the slow-munching jaws, stopped in mid-air and he sat staring at them. “Servians I do not know,” he said presently. “Russians I have had here, and Frenchmen, and Austrians, and many English, and all those I have found good. But Germans, of whom I have had still more, I do not like.... And yet I hardly know why,” he mused. “Their manners are not good, it is true; but it is something more than that. Well, I don’t know--it is just that I do not like them and perhaps they perceive it.” “It is a very general feeling,” said Ray. “Is it now? Well, that is strange, but it shows it is they who are somehow in the wrong.” “They don’t think so,” laughed Ray, as he drew Lois to her feet by both hands. “We must be jogging on or we won’t reach Davos to-night.” The old man firmly but politely declined Ray’s offer of a mark, saying, “I thank you, Herr, but there is no need. It has been a great pleasure to talk with you and the Fräulein,” and, not to tarnish so bright and unusual a trait, Ray did not press the matter, but offered him instead another cigar which was accepted at once as between man and man, and they all shook hands and parted. They crossed the river and threaded their way through a rock-strewn valley, and up and on, with the Weisshorn towering white on the right and the Schwarzhorn on the left. Then they passed two little lakes, the one on the right clear as crystal, the one on the left greenish-white and opaque, which Ray told her was glacier-water while the other was probably fed by hidden springs. They had lunch and another long rest at the Hospice, and then began the easy ten-mile stretch to Davos, through long stretches of pine-woods, dropping with the stream till it joined the Landwasser at Davos-Dorf, where they took the omnibus for Davos-Platz. “We’ll go to the Grand,” said Ray,--“clothes or no clothes. We’re sure to find English people there and we’ll learn what’s going on in the world outside.”