“Thinking about something long time ago, uncle Paul?” and the rosy cheek was laid close to the thin, pallid one.

“Tell us, uncle Paul; you know you promised us;” and Carry slid her arms about her uncle’s neck, and felt his great heart beat against her own.

“It was a long time ago,” began uncle Paul.  “I had just finished my studies, and not being strong, the physician advised a year’s travel on the continent.  My father was a merchant, and had friends in the different European cities, and there was little danger that I should lack for attention; and with a supply of letters, and one in particular to a friend of my father’s, a pastor among the mountains of Switzerland, I started.  I pass over the leave-taking; finding myself alone on the sea; the nights of calm when leaning over the ship’s side, looking down into the dark depths, murmuring snatches of home songs, bringing up vividly before me faces of those I loved; and as the ocean swells came rocking under us, down we went into the valleys and up over the hills of water.  I felt as safe, rocked in the great cradle of the deep, as when at home.  His eye was upon me; His arm encircled me.

“But pleasant as the voyage and full of memories, I see that you are impatient to pass over to the mountains of Switzerland.  Words are weak to describe the magnificence of the Juras:  looking upon the rolling heights shrouded with pine-trees, and down thousands of feet at the very roadside, upon cottage roofs and emerald valleys, where the deer herds were feeding quietly.  All this I had seen, and then we came to a little town called Bex; and here, from too much expenditure of enthusiasm perhaps, I was confined for weeks with a raging fever.

“One day, when the fever left me weak and feeble as a child, who should enter but the good pastor Ortler.  He had heard of my illness, and leaving home, he had travelled over the hills to nurse me in my weakness; and when I grew strong enough to bear it, he treated me to short drives along Lake Leman, whence we could see the meadows that skirt Geneva, the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy, and far behind them, so far that we could not distinguish between cap and cloud, Mont Blanc and the needles of Chamouni.

“The good pastor Ortler, with his fine voice and clear, earnest eyes, was in possession at all times of a charm of manner that had for me an irresistible fascination.  But when he talked of God, his greatness as seen in his works, the magnificent and matchless glory by which we were surrounded:  above all, when he spoke of His tenderness and love, I realized as I had never done before the beauty of holiness, and the happiness, in this life even, of a soul firmly anchored in the faith of Christ.

“Once, I remember, he steadied my feet to a rocky point overlooking the little town of Ferney, and the deserted chateau of Voltaire.  And then followed a conversation, in which the tenderness of the good pastor’s heart was manifest as he spoke of the fine mind wrecked on the sands of unbelief.  ‘And to think of this man’s influence,’ he said, with sorrow in his tones, and regrets over a lost life and a lost soul.