And, in the feeling of still warmer and closer companionship that thereby came upon them, they climbed on up the Strela, and down the steep zig-zags on the other side to the Haupter Alp, and down and down past Schmitten and Dörfli, first this side of the river, then the other, till they came to the Schanfiggthal and Langwies, where they stopped for lunch and a long rest. It was as they were coming down the hillside to Castiel that Lois had a quaint experience which Ray laughingly hoped would teach her a lesson. They came suddenly on an immense herd of goats, whose bells they had heard tinkling far away below them for half an hour or more. Captivated by the graceful activities of a black and white kid, which sprang up a high rock at the side of the road and posed there like a little Rodin, with its glassy eyes fixed vaguely on them, Lois produced a biscuit from her pocket and proffered it to the youngster. He sniffed doubtfully, nibbled eagerly, and leaped down for more. And in an instant she was the centre of a writhing mass of goats, who pushed and reared themselves against her and would take no denial. At first she laughed and pushed them off with her hands. Then it got beyond a joke. She gave them all she had, but they wanted more. Like the Danes and Ethelred, payment to go only drew them in larger numbers. Ray did his best to drag them back and get her clear, but they pushed and struggled and reared, with weirdest determination in their strange eyes and curving horns, till Lois grew somewhat startled. “Stupid beasts! Don’t you understand? You’ve had it all,” and she shook her empty hands in their stolid straining faces. They pushed all the harder. She grew frightened, especially when she saw the futility of Ray’s efforts. It was his angry shouts, as he laid about on their bony ribs and backs with his alpenstock, that at last drew a small boy in velveteens and a slouch hat round the corner, and at a shrill whistle from him the beasts came to their senses and left their victim hot and dishevelled and very much put out. “Why don’t you keep your ugly beasts in order?” shouted Ray. “Grüss Gott!” said the small boy with a vacant grin, and with stones and blows sent his flock jangling down into the lower woods. “That’s the most forcible argument I’ve ever come across against promiscuous charity,” laughed Ray, as Lois shook herself clear of the sense and smell of them and did up her hair. “The hideous beasts! Their stony eyes and stupid faces were awful,--a perfect nightmare! I shall dream of them for ages.” They stopped that night at Chur, and Lois duly dreamed of a never-ending struggle with multitudinous stony-eyed goats, and had a fairly bad night of it. She seemed, indeed, so unrefreshed in the morning that Ray decided to make an easy day’s work by taking train to Ilanz, and the diligence, if it was still running, for such further distance as it would take them.