Having followed this object for some distance
without gaining on it, and having called to
it many times without receiving any answer,
he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at
length coming up with it, he discovered it to
be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated
into a wingless state, and running along
the ground. Resolved to capture him or
perish in the attempt, he closed with the
bustard; but, the bustard, who had formed a
counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw
him, stunned him, and was last seen making
off due west. This weird man at that stage
of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-
walker, or an enthusiast, or a robber; but, I
awoke one night to find him in the dark at
my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed
in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day,
and retired from the county with all possible
precipitation.

That was not a common-place story which
worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland,
while I was staying there. It was a
very homely place, in a village of one narrow,
zig-zag street among mountains, and you
went in at the main door through the cow-
house, and among the mules and the dogs and
the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase
to the rooms: which were all of unpainted
wood, without plastering or papering—like
rough packing-cases. Outside, there was
nothing but the straggling street, a little toy
church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine
forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides.
A young man belonging to this Inn, had
disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-
time), and was supposed to have had some
undiscovered love affair, and to have gone
for a soldier. He had got up in the night,
and dropped into the village street from the
loft in which he slept with another man; and
he had done it so quietly, that his companion
and fellow-laborer had heard no movement
when he was awakened in the morning, and
they said " Louis, where is Henri? " They
looked for him high and low, in vain, and
gave him up. Now, outside this Inn there
stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in
the village, a stack of firewood; but, the
stack belonging to the Inn was higher than any
of the rest, because the Inn was the richest
house and burnt the most fuel. It began to
be noticed, while they were looking high and
low, that a Bantam cock, part of the
livestock of the Inn, put himself wonderfully out
of his way to get to the top of this wood-
stack; and that he would stay there for
hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared
in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks
went on—six weeks—and still this terrible
Bantam, neglecting his domestic affairs, was
always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing
the very eyes out of his head. By this time
it was perceived that Louis had become
inspired with a violent animosity towards the
terrible Bantam, and one morning he was
seen by a woman who sat nursing her goitre
at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch
up a rough billet of wood, with a great oath,
hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on
the wood-stack, and bring him down dead.
Hereupon, the woman, with a sudden light in
her mind, stole round to the back of the
wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all
those women are, climbed up, and soon was
seen upon the summit, screaming, looking
down the hollow within, and crying, " Seize
Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell!
Here is the body! " I saw the murderer
that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at
the Holly-Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying
shackled with cords on the stable litter, among
the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the
cows, waiting to be taken away by the police,
and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy
animal—the dullest animal in the stables—
with a stupid head, and a lumpish face
devoid of any trace of sensibility, who had
been, within the knowledge of the murdered
youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys
belonging to his master, and who had taken
this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser
out of his way. All of which he confessed
next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't
be troubled any more, now that they had got
hold of him and meant to make an end of
him. I saw him once again, on the day of
my departure from the Inn. In that Canton
the headsman still does his office with a
sword; and I came upon this murderer
sitting bound to a chair, with his eyes
bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-
place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded
with quicksilver in the thick part of the
blade), swept round him like a gust of wind,
or fire, and there was no such creature in the
world. My wonder was—not that he was so
suddenly dispatched, but that any head was
left unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards
of that tremendous sickle.

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind,
cheerful landlady and the honest landlord,
where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc,
and where one of the apartments has a
zoological papering on the walls, not so
accurately joined but that the elephant occa-
sionally rejoices in a tiger's hind legs and
tail; while the lion puts on a trunk and
tusks; and the bear, moulting as it were,
appears as to portions of himself like a
leopard. I made several American friends at
that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc, Mount
Blank—except one good-humored gentle-
man, of a very sociable nature, who became
on such intimate terms with it that he spoke
of it familiarly as " Blank; " observing at
breakfast, " Blank looks pretty tall this
morning; " or considerably doubting in the
court-yard in the evening, whether there
warn't some go-ahead naters in our country,
sir, that would make out the top of Blank
in a couple of hours from first start—now!

Once, I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the
North of England, where I was haunted by