she was riding he put his hand on the
crupper and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to talk to him,
enumerating with the minutest details all that he would have to attend to
during the winter. It was the first time that he was going to stay up
there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters amid the snow,
at the inn of Schwarenbach.

Ulrich Kunsi listened, without appearing to understand and looked
incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame
Hauser," but his thoughts seemed far away and his calm features remained
unmoved.

They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the end
of the valley. On the right one saw the black, pointed, rocky summits of
the Daubenhorn beside the enormous moraines of the Lommern glacier, above
which rose the Wildstrubel. As they approached the Gemmi pass, where the
descent of Loeche begins, they suddenly beheld the immense horizon of the
Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of the Rhone
separated them.

In the distance there was a group of white, unequal, flat, or pointed
mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two
peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty
and formidable pyramid of Mount Cervin, that slayer of men, and the
Dent-Blanche, that monstrous coquette.

Then beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrific
abyss, they perceived Loeche, where houses looked as grains of sand which
had been thrown into that enormous crevice that is ended and closed by
the Gemmi and which opens, down below, on the Rhone.

The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which winds and turns
continually, doubling backward, then, fantastically and strangely, along
the side of the mountain as far as the almost invisible little village at
its feet. The women jumped into the snow and the two old men joined them.
"Well," father Hauser said, "good-by, and keep up your spirits till next
year, my friends," and old Hari replied: "Till next year."

They embraced each other and then Madame Hauser in her turn offered her
cheek, and the girl did the same.

When Ulrich Kunsi's turn came, he whispered in Louise's ear, "Do not
forget those up yonder," and she replied, "No," in such a low voice that
he guessed what she had said without hearing it. "Well, adieu," Jean
Hauser repeated, "and don't fall ill." And going before the two women, he
commenced the descent, and soon al