Leaving Fluellen about two o'clock they proceeded in an open carriage drawn by three horses along a pretty road with fruit and walnut trees on either side, Swiss chalets and mountains all covered with woods on the left, and sloping fields running down on the right towards the river of Reuss. The afternoon was intensely hot, and the sun beat down with great fierceness into the valley; our travellers also were much annoyed by gnats and gadflies. Passing the small village of Altorf, famous for Tell's exploit, the road nears the Reuss, and is very pretty, owing to the walnut trees that fringe its sides, till they reached Amstaeg where horses were changed. The road then began gradually to ascend, crossing the Reuss several times. The river now began to grow into a wild mountain torrent, steeper grew the ascent now and steeper, and the Alps closed in the valley, till it became a scene of wildness and great desolation. Here and there the ragged rocks overhung the road, as it toiled upwards, and often galleries were cut through ledges that crossed the path. Upward still the carriage went, and light soon began to fail them in the regions most dismal. Ellen and her father now got out of the carriage, and walked up the steep incline, leaving their vehicle behind them. As the road wound round and round, they often saw it far below them, a speck on the white road, dimly seen in the darkness growing every minute deeper, and by-and-by the sharp crack of the driver's whip, that echoed like a pistol shot, or the peculiar song of the Switzer who drove, with its falsetto notes, only told them where it was, unless they caught a glimpse of the lamps creeping upwards. Star after star broke out on high, and soon the whole sky was one glorious canopy of flashing, glittering lights, far more brilliant than Ellen had ever seen them in the misty north. Soon they approached the part called the Devil's Bridge, where a thin single arch spans the dismal gulf, through which the impetuous stream now roared. Rent rocks on either side along whose ridges ran their road, and the stream foaming in misty white beneath--gloomy caverns through which from time to time lay their path, beetling depths spanned by thread-like bridges, and high above the spectral snow peaks, and rugged rocks on whose sterile sides not even the pine could find sustenance; all presented a scene of savage grandeur--lone, desolate, and loveless magnificence too nearly allied to our heroine's state of mind, not to find in her a sympathizer. She took a kind of melancholy delight in gazing on the gap of desolation through which the mad torrent thundered, and only compared it to her own frame of mind. At a late hour the travellers reached the Hospenthal, where a comfortable supper awaited them. The sharp mountain air at this elevated position sharpened all their appetites, and Mr. Ravensworth fancied he already saw a change for the better in his daughter's appearance.