The squire was delighted with my enthusiasm, and insisted upon my "doing" the place thoroughly. He did not rise until noon, so that my mornings were always free, and the Greys took me all the shorter excursions. One day we had quite a long trip to the top of the Gorner Grat, whence one gets an unrivalled view of snow peaks and glaciers; and from thence we walked to the Schwarz See, where the Matterhorn towers in front of you like an absolute monarch in loneliness and grandeur. Oh, those ravines, where the glacier-fed streams rage furiously in their rapid descent! Oh, those gorges, in whose depths the pent-up waters leap onward between high walls of rock to which the precarious gangway clings where you stand in momentary fear of disaster! Oh, those woods, with the steep and stony footpaths, and the sudden revelation of unsuspected objects: of kine munching the green herbage; of the women who tend them, working industriously with wool and needle; of wooden _chalets_ with stone-protected roofs; of trickling cascades and roaring waterfalls! Oh, those pastures, green as emerald, soft as velvet, where one might lie as on a couch of down and feast the eye on mountain and vale and sky, and never tire! Oh, those sunsets, and particularly the one which struck my imagination most, when the sky was not crimson, but topaz-tinted, and the huge cloud which hung suspended from the neck of the Matterhorn was changed in a second into beaten gold, as though touched by the rod of the alchemist; when the Breithorn flushed deep for a moment at the sun's caress, and the land lay flooded in a translucent yellow haze that spread like a vapour over the works of God and man, and turned mere stones and mortar into the fairy palaces of Eastern fable! It seems now like a wonderful dream, but, thank God! it is something much less transient. For a memory is infinitely better than a dream: the memory of an experience such as this is a continual feast, whereas a dream too often excites hopes that may never be realised, and presents visions of delight which are as elusive as the grapes of Tantalus. I stored up every detail for the squire's benefit. I cultivated my powers of observation more for his sake than my own, and reaped a double reward. All I saw is impressed still upon my brain with photographic sharpness, and it will be a long, long time before the image becomes faded or blurred. But what was better still, I saw the squire's eyes brighten and the "yonderly" look depart, as he came back to earth evening by evening and followed the story of my adventures.