ight through the snow, and,
on withdrawing it, looked down into space! I had actually walked over
the ridge altogether, and was standing above an abyss some thousands of
feet deep!"

"Horrible!" exclaimed Emma. "You jumped off pretty quickly, I dare
say."

"Nay, I walked off with extreme caution; but I confess to having felt a
sort of cold shudder with which my frame had not been acquainted
previously."

While they were thus conversing, a cloud passed overhead and sent down a
slight shower of snow. To most of the party this was a matter of
indifference, but the man of science soon changed their feelings by
drawing attention to the form of the flakes. He carried a magnifying
glass with him, which enabled him to show their wonders more distinctly.
It was like a shower of frozen flowers of the most delicate and
exquisite kind. Each flake was a flower with six leaves. Some of the
leaves threw out lateral spines or points, like ferns, some were
rounded, others arrowy, reticulated, and serrated; but, although varied
in many respects, there was no variation in the number of leaves.

"What amazin' beauty in a snowflake," exclaimed the Captain, "many a one
I've seen without knowin' how splendid it was."

"The works of God are indeed wonderful," said the Professor, "but they
must be `sought out'--examined with care--to be fully understood and
appreciated."

"Yet there are certain philosophers," observed Lewis, "who hold that the
evidence of design here and elsewhere does not at all prove the
existence of God. They say that the crystals of these snow-flakes are
drawn together and arrange themselves by means of natural forces."

"They say truly," replied the Professor, "but they seem to me to stop
short in their reasoning. They appear to ignore the fact that this
elemental original force of which they speak must have had a Creator.
However far they may go back into mysterious and incomprehensible
elements, which they choose to call `blind forces,' they do not escape
the fact that matter cannot have created itself; that behind their
utmost conceptions there must still be One non-created, eternal, living
Being who created all, who upholds all, and whom we call God."

Descending again from the heights in order to cross a valley and gain
the opposite mountain, our ramblers quitted the glacier, and, about
noon, found themselves close to a lovely pine-clad knoll, the shaded
slopes of which commanded an unusually fine vi