time he went out to see if he were not coming. It was quite
night now, that wan, livid night of the mountains, lighted by a thin,
yellow crescent moon, just disappearing behind the mountain tops.

Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and feet, while
he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have broken
a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step and dislocated his
ankle. And, perhaps, he was lying on the snow, overcome and stiff with
the cold, in agony of mind, lost and, perhaps, shouting for help, calling
with all his might in the silence of the night.. But where? The mountain
was so vast, so rugged, so dangerous in places, especially at that time
of the year, that it would have required ten or twenty guides to walk for
a week in all directions to find a man in that immense space. Ulrich
Kunsi, however, made up his mind to set out with Sam if Gaspard did not
return by one in the morning, and he made his preparations.

He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing iron,
tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist, and looked to see that
his iron-shod stick and his axe, which served to cut steps in the ice,
were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth, the
great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking, as
regularly as a heart beating, in its resounding wooden case. He waited,
with his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and he shivered when the
wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck twelve and he
trembled: Then, frightened and shivering, he put some water on the fire,
so that he might have some hot coffee before starting, and when the clock
struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door and went off in the
direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he mounted, scaling the
rocks by means of his climbing irons, cutting into the ice, advancing
continually, and occasionally hauling up the dog, who remained below at
the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by means of the rope.
It was about six o'clock when he reached one of the summits to which old
Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited till it should be
daylight.

The sky was growing pale overhead, and a strange light, springing nobody
could tell whence, suddenly illuminated the immense ocean of pale
mountain summits, which extended for a hundred leagues around him. One
might have said that this vague brightness arose from