One of these excursions was accompanied by a different and less agreeable finale. A small party had been arranged to visit the ruins of St. Michael’s Chapel, on the summit of the Holy Mountain. I had ascended it previously, after an hour’s climbing, directly up the side, but as ladies were to accompany us, it was necessary to take a winding road, two or three miles in length, to reach the chapel. We mounted, by flights of steps through the terraced vineyards, to the Philosopher’s Walk, followed it to a retired glen called the Angels’ Meadow, and then entered a forest-road. The wind roared loudly among the trees, and the sky grew darker as we ascended, but we took little heed of these signs. Finally, however, on reaching a rocky point whence we could look down on the Rhine-plain, we were somewhat alarmed to see a heavy rain-cloud approaching from the west. The chapel was still half a mile distant, and its open walls and dismantled towers could afford us no protection, so there was nothing left but to turn about and descend with all speed. The rain had just crossed the Rhine, and would probably be half an hour in reaching us, and as we could trace its misty advance on the sheet of landscape below us, we hoped to time our rate of walking so as to reach some shelter before it struck the mountain. Vain hope!—before we reached the Angels’ Meadow the wind fairly howled among the trees, and swept over us, laden with dust and showers of leaves. The rain followed, and as our path led over the exposed ridge of the mountain, the arrows of the storm smote pitilessly in our faces. The ladies shrieked, the men groaned, and, like Norval’s barbarians, we “rushed like a torrent,”—and with a torrent—“upon the vale.” When we arrived at the village of Neuenheim the shower was nearly over, but it might have continued all day, without more effect upon us.