This kindly intention is carried into effect. We are wakened early by a thump at _our_ door, and Rupert’s voice shouts, “Time to be up!” Then this young gentleman proceeds to the end of the piazza where a tin basin is placed for the use of the public. Hardly a minute elapses before we hear an exclamation. “Thunder!” he says. “Brother Eric, O Brother Eric, where are the provisions?” “Where are what?” asks Eric, coming out on the piazza. “Did you ask about the provisions? Why, where are they? Did anybody take them into the house last night?— Charley, did you?” “Not I,” answers Charley’s voice. “Have they disappeared? No doubt somebody put them away—Harrison, most likely.” [Illustration: “Three spectral, white-robed figures.”] “No, sir, I didn’t,” says Harrison, appearing on the scene. “But there’s hounds here, and they may have carried ’em off.” “By Jove!” says another voice—the dismayed voice of Mr. Lanier. “But hounds would have devoured the food where they found it.” “It’s all gone, anyway,” says Rupert. “Harrison, look about. The baskets must be _somewhere_. I know they were left here, for I saw them just before I went to bed.” “And might have thought of bringing them in,” says Eric. “We ought to tell them—really we ought!” says Sylvia, with a laugh. “Don’t do any thing of the kind,” says Mrs. Cardigan. “Let them look and wonder.” We hear a great deal of searching, and such exclamations as, “Very mysterious, by George!” and “What the deuce could have gone with the things?”—and preserve, I regret to state, a profound silence, until there comes another thump on our door. “I say”—it is Rupert’s voice again—“do you happen to have the provisions in there?” “The provisions!” answers Sylvia, in a tone of innocent surprise. “Pray, what should we be doing with the provisions?” “Well, they have disappeared—” Rupert begins, when I interpose with the truth. “They are here, Rupert,” I say. “We brought them in last night to keep them from the dogs. But you deserve to have had them eaten, for your carelessness.” “_They’ve_ got ’em!” we hear Rupert report a minute later, “and we owe them a good turn for not saying a word all this time.” There is so much preparation necessary for our departure that it is some time after breakfast before we start. About eight o’clock the guide arrives—a stalwart, broad-shouldered man of thirty-six or eight, with a frank, sunburned face, and a suggestion of the soldier as well as the hunter in his appearance. “What a study for a picture!” says Sylvia. “What a thorough type of the mountaineer! If he only wore a Tyrolean hat, now—” [Illustration: The Guide.] “Like a brigand in an opera!” says Charley. “What ideas women have, to be sure! Why, if you looked at it from the right point of view, that old felt is as much more picturesque as it is more comfortable.” “I suppose you flatter yourself that _yours_ is picturesque,” she says.