he would spend
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 reached to the
bottom of the valley. On the right, the Daubenhorn showed its black
mass, rising up in a peak above the enormous moraines of the Lommeon
glacier, which soared above the Wildstrubel. As they approached the
neck of the Gemmi, where the descent to Loeche begins, the immense
horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of
the Rhone separated them, came in view.

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

Then beneath them, as at the bottom of a terrible abyss, they saw
Loeche, its houses looking like grains of sand which had been thrown
into that enormous crevice which finishes and closes the Gemmi, and
which opens, down below, on to the Rhone.

The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which turns and twists
continually, zigzagging fantastically and strangely along the steep
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-bye, 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." Then, going
before the two women, he commenced the descent, and soon all three
disappeared at the first turn in the road, while the two men returned
to the inn at Schwarenbach.

They walked slowly side by side, without speaking. The parting was
over, and they would be alone together for four or five months. Then
Gasp