“I will change it myself then. I have no fear of England being beaten by any pigs of Germans. It’s enough to make you sick just to hear them eat,” and she took the note and climbed up to her own small room, and opened her box, and got out the other box in which she kept her savings, and came back with the change in her hands, much of it in five-franc pieces. “Là!” she chirped triumphantly. “There then is madame’s money, and here is monsieur’s change. I would not have them think we doubt them,--no, not for five francs,” and she went off with the receipted bill and the change on a plate. “Freda,” said Ray, as he added a lordly remembrance for herself, “I’d like to stop here for a month.” “Well--why not? Monsieur and mademoiselle will be very welcome indeed,” and Freda’s beam was a thing to remember. “Duty calls, my child. We’re going to Montreux to get married, you know, and then we want to get home as soon as circumstances will permit. Any news this morning?” “By the telephone they say there is terrible fighting in Belgium. The poor little country! I was there for a year, in Bruxelles. They are such nice quiet people, but not great fighters, I would think. And the Germans--they are strong. Oh, it is terrible to think of.” Half an hour later, while the sun was still wrestling with the mist-wreaths, they were climbing the long straight road to Realp. Turning off there by the second bridge, they took the old road in order to avoid the endless zig-zags of the new one, and following the telegraph posts they mounted rapidly towards the little Galenstock Hotel. On the Ebneten Alp, below the hotel, they sat down on a glacier-scored boulder for a last look over the Urseren-Thal and a rest before tackling the Furka. It was a wonderful sight--the wide green sweep of the valley right to the great white barracks at Andermatt and the zig-zags of the Oberalp-road beyond;--on the one side, the sprawling green and gray limbs of Spitzberge, still dappled with mist-wreaths but shining like frosted silver up above;--on the other side Piz Lucendro, with the Wyttenwasser-Thal and glacier below it;--and the upward road which led to the Furka was all white with snow. It made the walking more difficult, but the air was crisp and clear up there and the very fact of walking on snow was exhilarating. In places it was over their shoe-tops and the drifts by the road side, when they plunged their poles into them, were many feet deep. Far away below them in the Garschen-Thal they could see the cuttings and bridges for the new railway from Brigue to Disentis and Ilanz, but there was no work going on. The men had all gone to the front, and the unnatural offence of their blastings and delvings was for the time being suspended, though the scars and wounds of their previous efforts remained in painful evidence.