The baby in particular attracted my interest insomuch that I ventured to take the little creature in my arms in the hope that I might slip it out of the cartridge-like swaddling-case in which these poor little wretches are carried about. I might just as well have tried to pull off the muzzle of a gun; the babe was as tightly fixed in his terribly hot case as though it were a vice. And yet I doubt not he will grow into a fine stalwart son of the mountains, though how they ever manage to expand or lengthen at all is a mystery to me. I once sat talking to an old goatherd who certainly looked as if he had sat in the same nook in the mountains for at least a century. He was so bent and rheumaticky-looking that I quite failed to see how he could possibly make his way along the steep and slippery paths. His “old woman,” as he called her, was off down the valley gathering faggots. “She be a great worker,” he told me, and never got tired the way he did. I asked him if he liked the idea of the women doing most of the hard work; he answered by saying that it “was their way.” It suited the women to work at the hay, he seemed to think; and, besides, they hadn’t to smoke, which was evidently sufficient occupation for the men. This old man had never seen a railway until this last summer, when a branch line was run on to the village of Champéry, at the foot of his mountain home. I asked him what he thought of it, and he grumbled out a long tale of how it had already killed a lot of goats and sheep! Any sort of progress is looked upon with the greatest prejudice and suspicion by these people, who will undergo any fatigue and discomfort rather than change the routine of centuries. Coming down a mountain path one evening, I ran into a party of peasant girls toiling up with huge baskets of provisions strapped to their backs. In the half light I mistook them for men from their garb, but coming nearer I recognised their red togas, and later their women’s voices. [Illustration: A MOUNTAIN IDYLL. _From a Photo. by Jullien Bros._] Stopping to talk with them, I found that they were of the well-to-do natives who owned cows and mules, but they seldom thought of taking the mules along to carry up the provisions or themselves. It had always been the custom of their women to make pack-baskets out of their backs, and they would never think of doing otherwise. It is not easy to get these people to talk of themselves to strangers; they often resent being asked questions about their work and ideas. Yet the young women take interest in the pretty clothes of strangers. One of them came up to me and touched a blue lapis-lazuli ring I was wearing, her eyes simply devouring it, and the other trinkets I wore of the same stone. Finally, she exclaimed that she liked them very much, and also the frock of the same colour. I am quite certain there was a momentary pang of feminine envy in her heart, and a hatred for her own incongruous garments. [Illustration: RETRIBUTION.