also told more of the young girl, bride
and widow at eighteen; how she sought to throw herself into the clear
blue gulf; how she refused to leave Heiligenblut; how she would sit,
tearless, by the rim of the crevasse, day after day, and gaze into
its profundity. A guide or man was always with her at these times, for
it was still feared she would follow her young husband to the depths
of that still sea. Her aunt went over from England to her; the summer
waxed; autumn storms set in; but no power could win her from the place
whence Charles had gone.

If there was a time worse for her than that first moment, it was when
they told her that his body never could be found. They did not dare to
tell her this for many days, but busied themselves with idle cranes
and ladders, and made futile pretences with ropes. Some of the big,
simple-hearted guides even descended into the chasm, absenting
themselves for an hour or so, to give her an idea that something was
being done. Poor Mrs. Knollys would have followed them had she been
allowed, to wander through the purple galleries, calling Charles. It
was well she could not; for all Kaspar could do was to lower himself a
hundred yards or so, chisel out a niche, and stand in it, smoking his
honest pipe to pass the time, and trying to fancy he could hear the
murmur of the waters down below. Meantime Mrs. Knollys strained her
eyes, peering downward from above, leaning on the rope about her
waist, looking over the clear brink of the bergschrund.

It was the Herr Doctor Zimmermann who first told her the truth. Not
that the good Doctor meant to do so. The Herr Doctor had had his
attention turned to glaciers by some rounded stones in his garden
by the Traunsee, and more particularly by the Herr Privatdocent
Spluethner. Spluethner, like Uncle Toby, had his hobby-horse, his pet
conjuring words, his gods _ex machina_, which he brought upon the
field in scientific emergencies; and these gods, as with Thales, were
Fire and Water. Craters and flood were his accustomed scapegoats, upon
whose heads were charged all things unaccountable; and the Herr
Doctor, who had only one element left to choose from, and that a
passive one, but knew, on general principles, that Spluethner must be
wrong, got as far off as he could and took Ice. And Spluethner having
pooh-poohed this, Zimmermann rode his hypothesis with redoubled zeal.
He became convinced that ice was the embodiment of orthodoxy. Fixing
his profession