And so it was half-past six in the evening when they reached Ruēras, where the diligence stopped for the night and they perforce stopped also. The accommodation was somewhat primitive, but the freedom of the simple life condoned everything. They ate well and slept well, and started off next morning in the best of spirits, with no cloud upon their horizon but the nebulous possibilities of the unknown future; and quite unconscious of the fact that, at eleven o’clock the night before, the mightiest die in the world’s history had been cast. Great Britain had declared war on Germany. They crossed a brook and a torrent, and in a deep ravine below the fragment of a ruined castle, Ray pointed out to her the little stream which he told her was the Baby Rhine in its cradle. “It’s always interesting to get back right to the beginning of a thing which in the end becomes a very big thing. We know what the Rhine is at its best and there’s where it begins.” “I shall never forget it,” said Lois, hanging on to his arm. “And if the old Colonel is right, away over yonder it will soon be running red,” said Ray thoughtfully. “We’ll try and not think about it till we have to.... But whatever comes, Ray, life has been very good to us.” “Yes, thank God! We have tasted the joy of it, whatever follows.” And away over yonder, the German hordes had, days ago, surged over the Rhine, and now they had burst into Belgium and were hammering at Liége, and the Meuse was running red and pouring its flood into the Rhine on its way to the sea. They climbed steadily, with wonderful views over Rheintal and up into Vorder Rheintal, crossed the summit of Pass da Tiarms, and came down again to the old high-road at the eastern end of the gloomy little Oberalp-See. “There lies the highway to happiness,” said Ray, pointing away in front where, in the dim distance, a white thread of a road wound along a lofty mountain-side. “That’s the Furka. Once we’re over that we’re in the Rhone Valley and almost at Montreux,” and he pressed her arm tight again as a reminder of all that Montreux would mean for them. They took the short cut down to Andermatt, got shaken almost to pieces with its stony steepness, and went to the Bellevue to recuperate with a well-earned lunch, and in hopes of getting some recent news from the outside world. But the Berne papers had not yet arrived and the foreign ones were many days old, and a chat with the manager furnished only disquieting war-like rumours, gathered by him from the officers of the big artillery-camp who sometimes came into the hotel for a meal or a smoke. Ray was obviously restless under this lack of news, and Lois was quick to perceive and understand it. “Let us get on,” she said. “Can you? Sure you’re not done up?” “Not a bit of it. It is delightful rambling along like this, but I’ve always the feeling that dreadful things may be going on outside, and if they are, the sooner we know the better.”