It was, if one began it a little less rashly than he had, no great distance thither. If you mounted the slope from the end of the sledge-run in the village, you could reach in some twenty minutes the picturesque spot where the wooden bridge of the path through the forest crossed above the run as it came down from the Schatzalp, provided you kept to the shortest route, did not loiter about, nor pause too long to get your breath. Hans Castorp, when Joachim was detained at home in the service of the cure, for some examination, blood-test, X-ray photography, weighing, or injection, would stroll thither in good weather, after second breakfast, or even after first; or he would employ the hours between tea and dinner in a visit to his favourite spot, to sit on the bench where once the violent nose-bleeding had overtaken him, to listen with bent head to the sound of the torrent and gaze at the secluded scene, with the hosts of blue aquilegias blooming in its depths.