Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/63

42 saint enabled us to baffle the malignant Geister. When we had duly arrived on the Furggen glacier, Venetz suggested a doubt as to whether the saint had really earned the candles. He showed us a small necklet he was wearing, which contained the tooth or thumb-nail, or other decaying débris, of an exceptionally holy saint, and which, he averred, was, as cricketers would say, "quite able to lick all the Zermatt Geister off its own bat."

However, Burgener assured me that, in bargains of this sort, it is always the better plan to pay, "especially," he added, "when a few francs are alone at issue." So we subsequently duly discharged our debts. We got back to Zermatt just in time for table d'hôte, after a day of the most varied interest and excitement.

The next day we walked, railed, and drove back to Chamonix. Our minds were chiefly occupied with the various apparitions we had encountered. Burgener, after a protracted talk with the priest at Stalden, had come to the conclusion that the candles and Venetz's amulet would have been wholly ineffective against Todten Leute, and that, consequently, the apparitions we had seen could not have been real, bonâ fide specimens. My explanation of the will-o'-the-wisps was accepted, and they were dismissed as mere natural phenomena. But it was less easy to dispose of the light on the Gorner glacier. Burgener and Venetz thought that probably a big lump of gold had