musically in the warm air; the small birds chirped lazily now and then in desultory conversation, too hot to hop or fly; and a small lizard lay along the wall dazed and stupid in the noontide heat. The genius loci was doubtless cooling himself in the retirement of some luxurious hole among the ruins, and the dwarf Perkéo, famous in song and toast, had the best of it that day down in the cellar by the great tun.

But Claudius was of a tough nature, and minded neither heat nor cold; only when a large bluebottle fly buzzed round his nose he whisked his broad hat to drive the tormentor away, and said to himself that summer had its drawbacks even in Germany, though there were certainly more flies and mosquitoes and evil beasts on the wing in Sweden during the two months' heat there. On the whole, he was pretty comfortable among the ruins on this June day, though he ought to begin considering where his summer foot tour was to take him this year. It might be as well, certainly. Where could he go? There was the Black Forest, but he knew that thoroughly; Bohemia—he had been there; Switzerland; the Engadine—yes, he would go back to Pontresina and see what it had grown into since he was there six years ago. It used to be a delightful place then, as different from St. Moritz as anything could well be. Only students and artists and an occasional sturdy English climber used to go to Pontresina, while all Europe congregated at St. Moritz half a dozen miles away. He would go there as he went everywhere, with a knapsack and a thick stick and a few guldens in his pocket, and be happy, if so be that he had any capacity for enjoyment left in him.

"It is absurd," said Claudius to himself, argumentatively. "I am barely thirty years old, as strong as an ox, and I have just inherited more money than I know what to do with, and I feel like an old cripple of ninety, who has nothing left to live for. It must be morbid imagination or liver complaint, or something."

But it was neither liver nor imagination, for it was perfectly genuine. Tired of writing, tired of reading, of seeing, of hearing, and speaking; and yet blessed with a constitution that bid fair to carry him through another sixty years of life. He tried to argue about it. Was it possible that it came of living in a foreign country with whose people he had but a fancied sympathy? There are no folk like our own folk, after all; and there is truly a great gulf between Scandinavians and every other kind of people. But it seemed to Claudius that he loved the Germans and their ways—and indeed he did; but does not everyday experience show that the people we admire, and even love, the most are not 

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