"It was what I was thinking of just now," I answered. "Are we to part company?" The Boy laughed--an odd little laugh. "Why, that depends," said he abruptly, "on where you are going. I've planned to walk back over the St. Bernard to Martigny, and so by way of the Tête Noire to Chamounix. That name--Chamounix--has always been to my ears, as Stevenson says, 'like the horns of elf-land, or crimson lake.' I want to come face to face with Mont Blanc, of which I've only seen a far-off mirage, long ago when I was a little chap, at Geneva. What are your plans?" "If I ever had any, I've forgotten them," said I. "Look here, Little Pal, shall we join forces as far as--as far as----" "The turnstile," he finished my broken sentence. "Where is the turnstile?" "At the place--whatever it may be--where we get tired of each other. Isn't that what you meant?" "According to my present views, that place might be at the other end of the world. You must remember it was never I who tried to get away from you. At the Cantine de Proz, I----" "Don't let's remember to that time. Then, I didn't know that you were--You. That makes all the difference. You looked as if you might be nice, but I've learned not to trust first impressions, especially of men--grown-up men. There are such lots of people one drifts across, who are not _real_ people at all, but just shells, with little rattling nuts of dull, imitation ideas inside, taken from newspapers, or borrowed from their friends. Fancy what it would be to see glorious places with such a companion! It would drive me mad. I determined not to make aquaintances on this trip; but you--why, I feel now as if it would be almost insulting you to call you 'an acquaintance.' We are--oh, I'll take your word! We're 'pals,' and Something big that's over all meant us to be pals. I don't mind telling you, Man, that I should miss you, if we parted now." "We won't part," I said quickly. "We'll jog along together. Have a cigarette? I'm going to smoke a pipe, because I feel contented." Between puffs of that pipe (an instrument which I strongly but vainly recommended to the Boy) I told him of my night drive over the St. Gothard. As it was his whim to consider names of no importance, I did not mention that of Jack and Molly Winston, but spoke of them merely as "my friends." "Could we do the St. Bernard at night?" he asked eagerly. "Yes, we could, if we saved ourselves by driving up from here to St. Rhémy, after déjeuner, otherwise it would mean being on foot all day and all night too. We could send Joseph, Innocentina, and the animals on very early to-morrow morning, to the Hospice, where they might rest till evening. The good monks would give us a meal of some sort about six, and at seven we could leave the Hospice. There would be an interval of starry darkness, and then we should have the full moon."