"Married a step-sister in the States. Must look him up some day," concluded the B. M. O., adjusting his field glasses and focussing them on two dark dots moving across a distant waste of alpine roses along the edge of a chasm. One of the dots happened to be the "relative of sorts" just mentioned; but the B. M. O. could not know that. And a moment afterward the dots became invisible against the vast mass of the mountain, and did not again reappear within the field of the English officer’s limited vision. So he never knew he had seen his relative of sorts. Up there on the alp, one of the dots, which at near view appeared to be a good-looking, bronzed young man in khaki, puttees, and mountain shoes, said to the other officer who was scrambling over the rocks beside him: "Did you ever see a better country for sheep?" "Bear, elk, goats--it’s sure a great layout," returned the younger officer, a Canadian whose name was Stent. "Goats," nodded Brown--"sheep and goats. This country was made for them. I fancy they _have_ chamois here. Did you ever see one, Harry?" "Yes. They have a thing out here, too, called an ibex. You never saw an ibex, did you, Jim?" Brown, who had halted, shook his head. Stent stepped forward and stood silently beside him, looking out across the vast cleft in the mountains, but not using his field glasses. At their feet the cliffs fell away sheer into tremendous and dizzying depths; fir forests far below carpeted the abyss like wastes of velvet moss, amid which glistened a twisted silvery thread--a river. A world of mountains bounded the horizon. "Better make a note or two," said Stent briefly. They unslung their rifles, seated themselves in the warm sun amid a deep thicket of alpine roses, and remained silent and busy with pencil and paper for a while--two inconspicuous, brownish-grey figures, cuddled close among the greyish rocks, with nothing of military insignia about their dress or their round grey wool caps to differentiate them from sportsmen--wary stalkers of chamois or red deer--except that under their unbelted tunics automatics and cartridge belts made perceptible bunches. Just above them a line of stunted firs edged limits of perpetual snow, and rocks and glistening fields of crag-broken white carried the eye on upward to the dazzling pinnacle of the Col de la Reine, splitting the vast, calm blue above. Nothing except peaks disturbed the tranquil sky to the northward; not a cloud hung there. But westward mist clung to a few mountain flanks, and to the east it was snowing on distant crests. Brown, sketching rapidly but accurately, laughed a little under his breath. "To think," he said, "not a Boche dreams we are in the Carnic Alps. It’s very funny, isn’t it? Our surveyors are likely to be here in a day or two, I fancy."