ich he had looked down on to
the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which
led to the Wildstrubel. Loeche was now covered by the snow, and the
houses could scarcely be distinguished, hidden as they were by that
white cloak.

Turning to the right, Ulrich reached the Lammern glacier. He strode
along with a mountaineer's long swinging pace, striking the snow, which
was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with piercing eyes
looking for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that
enormous, white expanse.

When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped, and asked himself
whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk
along the moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining;
the snow was assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough
gusts over its crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill,
vibrating call. His voice sped through the deathlike silence in which
the mountains were sleeping; it reached into the distance, over the
profound and motionless waves of glacial foam, like the cry of a bird
over the waves of the sea; then it died away and nothing answered him.

He started off again. The sun had sunk behind the mountain tops, which
still were purpled with the reflection from the heavens; but the depths
of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt
frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude,
the wintry death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were
stopping and freezing his blood, making his limbs grow stiff, and
turning him into a motionless and frozen object; and he began to run
rapidly toward the dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have
returned during his absence. He had probably taken another road; and
would, no doubt, be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his
feet.

He soon came in sight of the inn, but no smoke rose from it. Ulrich ran
faster. Opening the door he met Sam who ran up to him to greet him, but
Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunsi, in his alarm, turned round
suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner.
Then he relighted the fire and made the soup; hoping every moment to
see the old man come in. From time to time he went out to see if
Gaspard were not in sight. It was night now, that wan night of the
mountain, a livid night, with the crescent moon, yellow and dim, just
disappearing behind the mo