their curiously carved toy houses. Yonder, behind the fir-trees, still stood his
grandfather’s house, his mother’s father, but strangers dwelt in it now.
Children came running to him, as he had once done, and wished to sell their
wares. One of them offered him an Alpine rose. Rudy took the rose as a
good omen, and thought of Babette. He quickly crossed the bridge where
the two rivers flow into each other. Here he found a walk over-shadowed
with large walnut-trees, and their thick foliage formed a pleasant shade.
Very soon he perceived in the distance, waving flags, on which glittered a
white cross on a red ground-the standard of the Danes as well as of the
Swiss-and before him lay Interlachen.
“It is really a splendid town, like none other that I have ever seen,” said
Rudy to himself. It was indeed a Swiss town in its holiday dress. Not like
the many other towns, crowded with heavy stone houses, stiff and foreign
looking. No; here it seemed as if the wooden houses on the hills had run
into the valley, and placed themselves in rows and ranks by the side of the
clear river, which rushes like an arrow in its course. The streets were rather
irregular, it is true, but still this added to their picturesque appearance.
There was one street which Rudy thought the prettiest of them all; it had
been built since he had visited the town when a little boy. It seemed to him
as if all the neatest and most curiously carved toy houses which his
grandfather once kept in the large cupboard at home, had been brought out
and placed in this spot, and that they had increased in size since then, as the
old chestnut trees had done. The houses were called hotels; the woodwork
on the windows and balconies was curiously carved. The roofs were gayly
painted, and before each house was a flower garden, which separated it
from the macadamized high-road. These houses all stood on the same side
of the road, so that the fresh, green meadows, in which were cows grazing,
with bells on their necks, were not hidden. The sound of these bells is often
heard amidst Alpine scenery. These meadows were encircled by lofty hills,
which receded a little in the centre, so that the most beautifully formed of
Swiss mountains-the snow-crowned Jungfrau - could be distinctly seen
glittering in the distance. A number of elegantly dressed gentlemen and
