In the early part of the next week, Will proposed one day they should mount the hills behind St Valentin, in search of a rare fern he was anxious to secure before the snows of winter. Andreas Hausberger, nodding his head, had heard of it before. It was a well-known rarity; all botanists who came to the Zillerthal, he said, were sure to go in search of it. “But I’m not a botanist,” Will burst out deprecatingly, for to admit that fell impeachment is to number yourself outright in the dismal roll of scientific Dryasdusts; “I only want the plants because I love them.” “That’s all right,” Andreas answered, in his accustomed phrase. “You want the plant, anyway. That’s the chief thing, ain’t it? Wal, there’s only one place anywhere about St Valentin that it ever grows, and that’s the Tuxerloch; without somebody to guide you there you’d never find it.” “Oh, I won’t have a guide,” Will responded, hastily. “I hate to be guided. It’s too ignominious. If I can’t find my own way about low mountains like these, in the forest region, I’d prefer to lose it; and I certainly won’t pay a man to show me where the fern is.” “Certainly not,” the _wirth_ answered, with true Tyrolese thrift. “I didn’t mean that. Why waste your money on one of the regular guides, who charge you five florins for eating half your lunch for you? But Linnet knows the way as well as any trained guide of them. It’s not a hard road; she’ll go along with you and show you it.” “Oh, dear no,” Will replied, with a little hurried embarrassment, for he felt it would be awkward to be thrown all day into the society of a young girl in so equivocal a position. “I’m sure we can find the way all right ourselves. There are woodcutters on the hills we can ask about the path; and if it comes to that, I really don’t mind whether I find it or not—it’s only by way of goal for a day’s expedition.” Andreas Hausberger, however, was an imperious soul. “Linnet shall go,” he said, shortly, without making more words about it. “She has nothing else to do. It’s bad for her to be cooped up in the house too much. A long walk on the hills will be no end of good for her. That’s what I always say; when young women come down from the mountains in winter, they do themselves harm by changing their mode of life all at once too suddenly, and living in close rooms without half the exercise they used to take on the alp with their milking and churning.”