k at the
village. In the evening they played at cards, dice, or dominoes, and
lost and won trifling sums, just to create an interest in the game.

One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving
cloud of white spray, deep and light, was falling on them noiselessly,
and burying them by degrees under a dark, thick coverlet of foam. This
lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and
the windows, to dig out a passage, and to cut steps to get over this
frozen powder, which a twelve-hours' frost had made as hard as the
granite of the moraines.

They lived like prisoners, not venturing outside their abode. They had
divided their duties and performed them regularly. Ulrich Kunsi
undertook the scouring, washing, and everything that belonged to
cleanliness. He also chopped up the wood, while Gaspard Hari did the
cooking and attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was
relieved by long games at cards or dice, but they never quarreled, and
were always calm and placid. They were never even impatient or
ill-humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a
stock of patience for this wintering on the top of the mountain.

Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and
occasionally killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at
Schwarenbach, and they reveled in fresh meat. One morning he went out
as usual. The thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and
as the sun had not yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals
at the approaches to the Wildstrubel. Ulrich, being alone, remained in
bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but would not have
dared to give way like that to his inclination in the presence of the
old guide, who was ever an early riser. He breakfasted leisurely with
Sam, who also spent his days and nights in sleeping in front of the
fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at the solitude,
and was seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one is by
the domination of an invincible habit. So he went out to meet his
companion, who was to return at four o'clock.

The snow had leveled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses,
obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that
between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white,
regular, dazzling, and frozen surface. For three weeks, Ulrich had not
been to the edge of the precipice, from wh