“Nobody coming!” he will cry, as if the expression of his grief was literally squeezed out of him by some internal agony. “Nobody—nobody—One gentleman and a female—and the driver! O mein Gott! mein Gott! Ach Gott in Himmel what have I done to be thus ruined? Ach! tut! one mann mit a female, and dinner ready for twenty! It is mein death, mein ruin!”—and the huge man will almost weep with sheer disappointment. Sometimes, out of mischief, I would remind him: “I am here, Herr Lindt; you have me, you know.” And this was always the last straw. He was too uniformly courteous to express his opinion as to what I might amount to as far as money went, but you should have seen the look that he would cast on me as he opened the little gate, with all the air of a fallen monarch, to the one or two passengers that the motor had brought to him. Still, in general, he was the most genial of hosts; no trouble was too great for him to take for the comfort and amusement of his guests. Besides, he is the Lindt of Lindt’s! He has created Lindt’s, adapting one of the most beautiful spots possible to human needs; not merely the needs of food or shelter, but that other need which we all feel—for a flavour of personal liking and interest that will hold us, even when the best scenery in the world seems but dust and ashes. An alternative of Lindt’s—and in some moods, also in some company, a very seductive one—is afforded by supplying oneself with a luncheon-basket, and driving in the motor merely to the summit of the hill, then camping till it returns. The spot to choose is just where the clear waters of the reserve pass at a distance of some fifty feet below the road, separated from it only by a steep bank and a thick belt of tree-fern and forest myrtle—another tree like the Ti-tree most absolutely Japanese in form, every curiously twisted bough soft and grey with lichen. The stream is looped here, and there is a little plateau of the greenest moss—real green this time—within the arm of the loop, on which to build one’s fire, kindling it surely and quickly with what is called “bull’s-wool,” the thick, dry fibre, like fine cocoa-nut matting, which forms the hair shirt of the gum-tree between the white skin and the cream and green and madder-tinted bark.