The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.--_Lear_.
The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a
hunting tour among the Pawnees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he
assures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his
game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering,
had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as
hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down
largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example.
At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton
had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying
such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was
well provisioned for several days.
After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad
road, clearly one of the great alpine passes. Which of them he could
not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing
of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the
best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants
had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to
threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an
open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had
taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not
speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which
might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local
knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack
of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather
than risk another prison.
The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of
the compass; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him,
dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that
it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pass of
the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on
safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.
Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it,
with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he
saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in
some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he
could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet
high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors
much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then,
taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place,
holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of
the scanty trust which Max had left him.
When he beheld her lusty proportions, her white teeth, grinning
between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the
coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and
stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of
him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two
common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for
food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in a _patois_
which was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than
his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for,
running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley
bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking
the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her apron.
Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the
country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food
and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were
quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him;
but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to
grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing,
and answering, "_Si, si!_" to all his questions indiscriminately. With
this he had to content himself. He bade her "_addio_," received a
friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter
against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.