moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the
lake and the mountains; and the distant cowbells were ringing.

Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo; and in a
few minutes found myself on the Lago di Cadagno. Here I heard that
there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the
simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine
o'clock in the evening. For now was the time when they had moved
up from Ronco, Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut
the hay, and were living for a fortnight or three weeks in the
chalets upon the Lago di Cadagno. As I have said, there is a
chapel, but I doubt whether it is attended during this season with
the regularity with which the parish churches of Ronco, Altanca,
&c., are attended during the rest of the year. The young people, I
am sure, like these annual visits to the high places, and will be
hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will be always there, and
will have to be cut by some one, and the old people will send the
young ones.

As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a
doze, and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and
sat beside me, and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the
green slopes that rise all round the lake were much higher than I
had thought; they went up thousands of feet, and there were pine
forests upon them, while two large glaciers came down in streams
that ended in a precipice of ice, falling sheer into the lake. The
edges of the mountains against the sky were rugged and full of
clefts, through which I saw thick clouds of dust being blown by the
wind as though from the other side of the mountains.