Page:Hopkinson Smith--armchair at the inn.djvu/276

 “It was the summer I made those studies of mountain brooks flowing out of the glaciers—you remember them, Herbert? Anyway, I was across the Swiss border, and in a ragged Italian town dumped down on the side of a hill as if it had been spilt from a cart—one of those sprawled-out towns with a white candle of a campanile overtopping the heap. The diligence, about sunup, had dropped me at the exact spot with my traps, and was hardly out of sight before I had started to work, and I kept it up all day, pegging away like mad, as I always do when a subject takes hold of me—and this particular mountain brook was choking the life out of me, with lots of deep greens and transparent browns all through it, and the creamy froth of a glass of beer floating on the top.

“When the sun began to sink down behind the mountains I realized that it was about time to find a place to sleep. I was at work on a 40 x 30—rather large for out-doors—and, as it would take me several days, I had arranged with a goatherd—who lived in a slant with stones enough on its roof to keep it from being blown into space—to let me store my wet canvas and my palette and box under its