"Isn't it rather early in the year for them?" "I don't think so." "It'll be cold, dear." "Well, we can stand a little cold, Jim. If we wait till the warm weather, we shall run into all the summer tourists." She had her way. The servants packed, and Jim went out to make arrangements. In an hour he was back. "All right," he triumphantly announced. "I've ordered our next batch of mail sent on as far as Neuchatel. We can get a train in forty-five minutes to Dijon, where we might as well stop over night. I found a ticket-seller that spoke some sort of English--and here are the tickets. Can you be ready?" She was ready. They started at once upon a feverish and constantly distracting journey. The night was passed at Dijon. In the early morning they boarded their train for Switzerland, went through the flat country east of Mouchard, then swept into the Juras, climbing high in air and looking over fruitful plains that stretched to the horizon and were cut by white strips of road which seemed to run for lengths of ten miles without deviation from their tangent. The train would plunge into a black tunnel and emerge to look down at a little valley among vineyards with old red-tiled cottages clustered around a high-spired church. Another tunnel would succeed, and another red-tiled village and high-spired church would follow. Mile upon mile of pine-forest spread itself along the tracks, and then, at last, toward late afternoon, far beyond Pontarlier and the fortressed pass to the east of it, there was revealed, forward and to the right, what Muriel mistook for jagged, needle-like clouds about a strip of the sky: the lake of Neuchatel with the white Sentis to the Mont Blanc Alpine range, the Jungfrau towering in its midst. But a day at Neuchatel sufficed Muriel; on the next morning she wanted to move on. She made enquiries. "We might motor to Soleure," she said to Stainton, and when the motor was finally chosen, she decided for the train and Zurich. "Why, they say there is nothing much to see in Zurich," Jim faintly protested. "Let's find out for ourselves," said Muriel. "Besides, we have done almost no travelling, and that's what we came for, and now you've no business and nothing else to do." So they were en route again on the day following, by way of Berne, through the wooded mountains, past the loftily placed castle of Aarburg, past picturesque Olten and Brugg with its ancient abbey of Koenigsfelden, where the Empress Elizabeth and Queen Agnes of Hungary had sought to commemorate the murder of the Emperor Albert of Austria by John of Swabia, five hundred years before. They saw the hotels of Baden and the Cistercian abbey of Wettingen, and they came, by noon, to Zurich. They lunched and took a motor drive about the city. In the midst of their tour, just as they were speeding through the Stadthaus-Platz on their way to the Gross-Muenster, Muriel said: