the
roof, covering the windows and blocking up the door.

It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to
Loeche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming
dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by
the three sons. Then the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise
mounted a fourth mule and set off in their turn and the father followed
them, accompanied by the two men in charge, who were to escort the
family as far as the brow of the descent. First of all they passed round
the small lake, which was now frozen over, at the bottom of the mass of
rocks which stretched in front of the inn, and then they followed the
valley, which was dominated on all sides by the snow-covered summits.

A ray of sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen desert
and illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame. No living thing
appeared among this ocean of mountains. There was no motion in this
immeasurable solitude and no noise disturbed the profound silence.

By degrees the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall, long-legged Swiss,
left old man Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up the
mule which bore the two women. The younger one looked at him as he
approached and appeared to be calling him with her sad eyes. She was a
young, fairhaired little peasant girl, whose milk-white cheeks and pale
hair looked as if they had lost their color by their long abode amid the
ice. When he had got up to the animal she was riding he put his hand on
the crupper and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to talk to him,
enumerating with the minutest details all that he would have to attend
to during the winter. It was the first time that he was going to stay up
there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters amid the snow,
at the inn of Schwarenbach.

Ulrich Kunsi listened, without appearing to understand and looked
incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame
Hauser," but his thoughts seemed far away and his calm features remained
unmoved.

They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the end
of the valley. On the right one saw the black, pointed, rocky summits
of the Daubenhorn beside the enormous moraines of the Lommern glacier,
above which rose the Wildstrubel. As they approached the Gemmi pass,
where the descent of Loeche begins, they suddenly beheld the immense
horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the b