e them without much difficulty."

As she spoke thus, her piercing, earnest gaze thrilled him to the very
soul, and his heart rose in rebellion against his reason. He had seen
many fair women, but assuredly none as fair as this one. What eyes! What
hair! What a complexion! What limbs! It seemed to him that she was not
like ordinary women, that she was not of the same flesh and blood as any
of the women he had ever met, and that she was in reality something far
superior; something generated by the primitive glamour of the starry
night, of the great, sparkling, ice-covered lake, and the lone,
snow-capped peaks beyond. And all the while he was thinking thus, and
unconsciously coming under the spell of her weird beauty, the woman
continued to gaze entreatingly at him from under the long lashes which
swept her cheeks. At last he could refuse her no longer--he would have
gone to hell with her had she asked it--and shouting to Carl to remain
where he was, he bade her lead the way. Setting off with long, quick
strides that made Hans wonder anew, she soon put a considerable distance
between herself and companion, and Carl. Hans now perceived a change;
the sky grew dark, the clouds heavy, and the farther they went, the more
perceptible this change became. The brightness and sense of joy in the
air vanished, and, with its dissipation, came a chill and melancholy
wind that rose from the bosom of the lake and swept all around them,
moaning and sighing like a legion of lost souls.

But Hans, who came of a military stock, feared little, and, with his
beautiful guide beside him, would cheerfully have faced a thousand
devils. He had no eyes for anything save her, no thought of anything but
her, and when she sidled up to him, playfully fingering his gun, he
allowed her to take it from him and do what she liked with it. Indeed,
he was so absorbed in the contemplation of her marvellous beauty, that
he did not perceive her deftly unload his rifle and throw it from her on
the ice; nor did he take any other notice than to think it a very
pretty, playful trick when she laughingly caught his two hands, and
bound them securely together behind his back. He was still drinking in
the wondrous beauty of her eyes, when she suddenly slipped one of her
pretty, shapely feet between his, and with a quick, subtle movement,
tripped him and threw him to the ground. There was a dull crash, and,
amid the hundred and one sounds that echoed and re-echoed through