“Very well, very well—­what of it?”

“I’m great friends with that old patriarch.  He comes every evening to tell me good-by.  I saw him an hour ago —­he’s off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning—­as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed.  The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more.”

Another silent pause.  The stranger broke it: 

“Is that all?”

“That is all.”

“Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough.  But what’s it all for?”

“Oh, nothing in particular.”

“Well, where’s the point of it?”

“Oh, there isn’t any particular point to it.  Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I’d advise you to ‘put up at Gadsby’s’ for a spell, and take it easy.  Good-by.  God bless you!”

So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.

He never got that post-office.

To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours’ waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to “put up at Gadsby’s” and take it easy.  It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it.  One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don’t fish for at all—­the recent dog and the translated cat.

CHAPTER XXVII [I Spare an Awful Bore]

Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the “Glacier Garden”—­and it is the only one in the world.  It is on high ground.  Four or five years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age.  Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon.  The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey.  This track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers.  These huge round boulders