HALF A MILLION OF MONEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

CHAPTER IV. THE CHATEAU ROTZBERG.

AMID the many hundred miles which it
traverses from its source in the glacier-land to its
dispersion among the border flats of the Zuyder
Zee, the great Rhine river flows through no
district so full of strange interest, so wild, so
primitive, so untrodden, as that deep and lonely
valley that lies between Chur and Thusis in the
Canton Grisons. The passing traveller hastening
on to the Splugen, the wandering artist eager for
Italy, alike hurry past with scarce a glance or a
thought for the grey peaks above, or the stony
river-bed below, the beaten highway. They little
guess what green delicious valleys, what winding
ravines, what legend-haunted ruins, and fragrant
uplands jewelled with Alp-roses and purple
gentian-blossoms, lie all unsought among the
slopes and passes of the mountains round about.
Still less do they dream that to some of those
crumbling towers from which the very ivy has
long since withered away, there cling traditions
many centuries older than Christ; or that in
yonder scattered châlets, some of which cluster
like swallows' nests on shelves of granite six or
eight hundred feet above the level of the valley,
there is yet spoken a language unknown to the
rest of Europe. Only the historian and
archaeologist care to remember how there lie imbedded
in that tongue the last fragments of a forgotten
language; and how in the veins of the simple
mountaineers who speak it, there yet linger some
drops of the blood of a lost, a mighty, and a
mysterious people.

Thus it happened that William Trefalden, who
was neither an archaeologist nor an historian, but
only a brilliant, unscrupulous man of the world,
every fibre of whose active brain was busy just
then with a thousand projects, neither knew, nor
cared to know, any of these things, but took his
way up the valley of Domleschg without bestowing
a thought upon its people or traditions.

It was about five o'clock in the afternoon of
the fourth day from that on which he left
London. He had been on the road two nights
out of the three; and yet his eye looked none the
less bright, and his cheek none the paler. As he
strode along in the deep shade, glancing up from
time to time at the sunny heights above his head,
his step grew freer, and his bearing more
assured than usual. There was not a soil of travel
on his garments. The shabby office coat so
inseparably associated with its wearer in the
minds of his clerks, was discarded for a suit of
fashionable cut and indefinite hue, such as the
British tourist delighteth to honour. His gloves
and linen were faultless. Even his boots,
although he was on foot, were almost free from
dust. He looked, in short, so well dressed, and
so unlike his daily self, that it may be doubted
whether even Mr. Abel Keckwitch would have
recognised his employer at the first glance, if
that astute head-clerk could by any possibility
have met him on the way.

Absorbed in thought as he was, however, Mr.
Trefalden paused every now and then to
reconnoitre the principal features of the valley, and
make certain of his landmarks. The village
from which he had started was already left two
miles behind; and, save a ruined watch-tower
on a pedestal of rock some eighty feet above the
level of the road, there was no accessible building
in sight. The Hinter Rhine, with its grey waters
still dull from the glacier, ran brawling past him
all the way. There were pine forests climbing up
the spurs of the mountains; and flocks of brown
goats, with little tinkling bells about their necks,
browsing over the green slopes lower down.
Far above the sound of these little bells, uplifted,
as it were, upon gigantic precipices of bare
granite, rose, terrace beyond terrace, a whole
upper world of rich pasture lands, cultivated
fields, mossy orchards, and tiny hamlets, which,
seen from the valley, looked like carved toys
scattered over the velvet sward. Higher
still, came barren plateaus, groups of stunted
firs, and rugged crags among which the un-
melted snow lay in broad, irregular patches,
while far away to the right, where another valley
seemed to open westward, rose a mountain loftier
than all the rest, from the summit of which
a vast glacier hung over in icy folds that glittered
to the sun, like sculptured drapery depending
from the shoulder of some colossal statue.

But William Trefalden had no eyes for this
grand scene. To him, at that moment, the
mountains were but sign-posts, and the sun a
lamp to light him on his way. He was seeking
for a certain roadside shrine behind which, he
had been told, he should find a path leading to
the Chateau Rotzberg. He knew that he had