snow,
which, descending from the mountain peak, by a storm in the night,
had carried away the finger-post, and now only waited the slightest
impulse--the weight of that little child--to carry it down, down into
the depth below! And down, indeed, it went; at first, slowly--moving
like a great unbroken wave; then growing more hurried as it neared the
edge of the precipice, thickening and swelling with fresh masses: it
rose around him--now, circling his waist, now, enclosing his shoulders:
he had but time to grasp the little wooden cross, the emblem of hope and
succour, when the mass glided over the brink, and fell thundering into
the dark abyss.

I would not risk any little credit I may, perchance, possess with the
reader, by saying how deep that gorge actually was; but this will I say,
when standing on the spot, in a very different season from this I
have described--when the trees were in full leaf, the wild flowers
blossoming, and both sky above and river beneath, blue as the bluest
turquoise; yet even then, to look down the low parapet into the narrow
chasm, was something to make the head reel and the heart's blood chill.

But to my story.--It was the custom in this season, when the snow fell
heavily on the high passes, to transmit the little weekly mail between
Reute and Inspruck by an old and now disused road, which led along
the edge of the river, and generally, from its sheltered situation,
continued practicable and free from snow some weeks later than the
mountain road. It was scarce worthy to be called a road--a mere
wheel-track, obstructed here and there by stones and masses of rock
that every storm brought down, and not unfrequently threatened, by the
flooding of the river, to be washed away altogether.

Along this dreary way the old postilion was wending--now, pulling up
to listen to the crashing thunders of the snow, which, falling several
hundred feet above, might at any moment descend and engulf him--again,
plying his whip vigorously, to push through the gorge, secretly vowing
in his heart that, come what would, he would venture no more there that
year. Just as he turned a sharp angle of the rock, where merely space
lay for the road between it and the river, he found his advance barred
up by a larch-tree, which, with an immense fragment of snow, had fallen
from above. Such obstacles were not new to him, and he lost no time in
unharnessing his horse and attaching him to the tree. In a few minutes
the roa