I am an American, junior partner in a London mercantile house having a large Swiss connection; and a transaction--needless to specify her--required immediate and personal supervision abroad, at a season of the year when I would gladly have kept festival in London with my friends. But my journey was destined to bring me an adventure of a very remarkable character, which made me full amends for the loss of Christmas cheer at home. I crossed the Channel at night from Dover to Calais. The passage was bleak and snowy, and the passengers were very few. On board the steamboat I remarked one traveler whose appearance and manner struck me as altogether unusual and interesting, and I deemed it by no means a disagreeable circumstance that, on arriving at Calais, this man entered the compartment of the railway carriage in which I had already seated myself. So far as the dim light permitted me a glimpse of the stranger's face, I judged him to be about fifty years of age. The features were delicate and refined in type, the eyes dark and deep-sunken, but full of intelligence and thought, and the whole aspect of the man denoted good birth, a nature given to study and meditation, and a life of much sorrowful experience. Two other travelers occupied our carriage until Amiens was reached. They then left us, and the interesting stranger and I remained alone together. "A bitter night," I said to him, as I drew up the window, "and the worst of it is yet to come! The early hours of dawn are always the coldest." "I suppose so," he answered in a grave voice. The voice impressed me as strongly as the face; it was subdued and restrained, the voice of a man undergoing great mental suffering. "You will find Paris bleak at this season of the year," I continued, longing to make him talk. "It was colder there last winter than in London." "I do not stay in Paris," he replied, "save to breakfast." "Indeed; that is my case. I am going on to Bale." "And I also," he said, "and further yet." Then he turned his face to the window, and would say no more. My speculations regarding him multiplied with his taciturnity. I felt convinced that he was a man with a romance, and a desire to know its nature became strong in me. We breakfasted apart at Paris, but I watched him into his compartment for Bale, and sprang in after him. During the first part of our journey we slept; but, as we neared the Swiss frontier, a spirit of wakefulness took hold of us, and fitful sentences were exchanged. My companion, it appeared, intended to rest but a single day at Bale. He was bound for far-away Alpine regions, ordinarily visited by tourists during the summer months only, and, one would think, impassable at this season of the year. "And you go alone?" I asked him. "You will have no companions to join you?" "I shall have guides," he answered, and relapsed into meditative silence. Presently I ventured another question: "You go on business, perhaps-- not on pleasure?"