ow from their clothes:

"It is well to understand one another, friends all. This gentleman--"

"--Has," said Vendale, readily taking him up with a smile, "very pressing
occasion to get across. Must cross."

"You hear?--has very pressing occasion to get across, must cross. We
want no advice and no help. I am mountain-born, and act as Guide. Do
not worry us by talking about it, but let us have supper, and wine, and
bed."

All through the intense cold of the night, the same awful stillness.
Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or redden the snow. The same
interminable waste of deathly white; the same immovable air; the same
monotonous gloom in the sky.

"Travellers!" a friendly voice called to them from the door, after they
were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in hand, as yesterday; "recollect!
There are five places of shelter, near together, on the dangerous road
before you; and there is the wooden cross, and there is the next Hospice.
Do not stray from the track. If the _Tourmente_ comes on, take shelter
instantly!"

"The trade of these poor devils!" said Obenreizer to his friend, with a
contemptuous backward wave of his hand towards the voice. "How they
stick to their trade! You Englishmen say we Swiss are mercenary. Truly,
it does look like it."

They had divided between the two knapsacks such refreshments as they had
been able to obtain that morning, and as they deemed it prudent to take.
Obenreizer carried the wine as his share of the burden; Vendale, the
bread and meat and cheese, and the flask of brandy.

They had for some time laboured upward and onward through the snow--which
was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth
elsewhere--and they were still labouring upward and onward through the
most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to
fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a
little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without
apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing
upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound
and force imprisoned until now was let loose.

One of the dismal galleries through which the road is carried at that
perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of great strength, was near at
hand. They struggled into it, and the storm raged wildly. The noise of
the wind, the noise of the water, the thundering down of displaced masses