“I shall send an express, then, to Belvoir, and William will be here in a few days. And now I have something else to propose to you. My man Lance is very anxious to see the new country, although he has not directly asked my permission to go; but the poor fellow has served me so faithfully that I feel like indulging him. Only a lettered man, my dear George, can stand with cheerfulness this solitude month after month and year after year as I do, and, although Lance is a man of great natural intelligence, he never read a book through in his life, so that his time is often heavy on his hands. I think a few months of mountaineering would be a godsend to him in big lonely life up here, and I make no doubt at all that you would be glad to have him with you.”