Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/409

 "I? I've got all to say about them. They'd never have been thought of if I hadn't found their opera glass. The corpse belongs to me, and I'll do as I please with him."

I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries achieved by it naturally belonged to me. I was entitled to these remains, and could have enforced my right; but rather than have bad blood about the matter, I said we would toss up for them. I threw heads and won, but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all the next day searching, we never found a bone. I cannot imagine what could ever have become of that fellow.

The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad, we pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid "fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or organize a ferry.

Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin, when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet fever patient's; so, when we were about to enter one of the Leukerbad inns, and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused to stop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough, without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it. I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will neither bite me nor abide with me: but to calm Harris, we went to the Hotel des Alpes.

At the table d'hote we had this, for an incident. A very grave man,—in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity, and almost to austerity,—sat opposite us and he was "tight," but doing his best to appear sober. He took up a corked bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass a while, then sat it out of the way, with a contented look, and went on with his dinner.

Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course