“Then I loaded my little son, his foster-brother and his attendants with presents suited to the conditions of each. I returned heartfelt thanks to Mary Chester for her excellent care of my ‘nephew,’ and paid her six months in advance. “Finally, on the Thursday after Easter, I bade them all good-by and set out to return to Myrtle Grove. “I found my father in excellent health, but impatient to start on our journey. “I hurried my preparations, and two days after we left England for Germany, where it was my fate first to meet you, Abel Force, who made all the happiness of my life.” CHAPTER XXXVIII NEW LIFE “We avoided the ‘highways’ and public resorts of travel—the grand railway lines, the great cities, the famous spas, the big hotels, and we sought out the by-ways—unfrequented hamlets and villages on mountain heights or in forest depths, as yet undiscovered by the eyes, unprofaned by the feet of speculators. “We had seen enough of the splendor and magnificence of Europe; we wished to see some of its real, working life. “Yes, we wished to lose ourselves and find repose in obscurity. “Yet where can one go and avoid fate? Or where, let me ask you, Abel, can we travel and not meet an American tourist? “You remember the day and the place of our first meeting. It was on a glorious afternoon in July, when the sun was sinking in the west and kindling all the horizon into a conflagration. We were in a little chalet at the foot of the mountain. We had come out to view the magnificence of the sunset. The cowherd was penning his cattle; the shepherd was folding his sheep. “Coming down the mountain path we saw a solitary tourist, knapsack on back and alpenstock in hand. “That was my first sight of you, Abel; a tall, athletic, black-bearded man, whom we all first took for a Tyrolesian. “You came up to the door of the chalet, raised your hat to us and asked the cottagers if you could have a night’s lodging. “Do you remember, Abel? Of course you could be accommodated—roughly; we were all ‘roughing it’ for the time being. “So our acquaintance began. “That night you introduced yourself to us by name and nationality—Abel Force, of Maryland, United States; and when my father, in return, named himself and me your face brightened. You told him that on leaving America you had brought letters of introduction—among which was one from your late minister to St. James, addressed to the Earl of Enderby. These letters were all with your luggage at your hotel at Berne, where you had left them to come on this pedestrian excursion to the mountain. You added that you had missed Lord Enderby in England and learned that he was traveling on the Continent; that you deemed yourself strangely fortunate in having thus met him, and would present your credentials in the form of the ex-minister’s letter, as soon as we should reach Berne.