XXIII
He had a very friendly memory of a little mountain inn, accessible with moderate trouble from Lucerne, where he had once spent ten idle unadventurous days. He had at that time been trudging, knapsack on back, over half Switzerland, and, having had a sturdy conscience about covering ground, it was no shame to him to confess that he was mortally tired. The inn of which I speak appeared to have but recently exchanged the care of the stalled ox for that of the hungry tourist; but Rowland at least had felt himself only a feebler ruminant. It stood in a high shallow valley, with flower-strewn Alpine meadows sloping down to it from the base of certain rugged rocks whose outlines were grim against the late sky. Our friend had seen grander places that pleased him less, and whenever afterwards he wished to think of Alpine opportunities at their best he recalled this grassy concave among the steeper ridges and the August days passed in resting at his length in the lee of a sun-warmed boulder, with the light cool air astir about his temples, the wafted odours of the pines in his nostrils, the tinkle of the cattle-bells in his ears, the vast procession of the mountain-hours before his eyes and a volume of Wordsworth in his pocket. His face, on the Swiss hillsides, had been scorched to a brilliant hue, and his bed was a pallet in a loft, which he shared with a German botanist of colossal stature
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