s father's brother was a
famous chamois hunter and a well-known guide. Rudy was only a year
old, when he lost his father, and his mother longed to return to her
relations in Berner Oberlande. Her father lived a few hours walk from
Grindelwald; he was a carver in wood, and earned enough by it to live.
In the month of June, carrying her little child, she started
homewards, accompanied by two chamois hunters; intending to cross the
Gemmi on their way to Grindelwald. They already had accomplished the
longer part of their journey, had passed the high ridges, had come to
the snow-plains, they already saw the valley of their home, with its
well-known wooden houses, and had now but to reach the summit of one
of the great glaciers. The snow had freshly fallen and concealed a
cleft,--which did not lead to the deepest abyss, where the water
roared--but still deeper than man could reach. The young woman, who
was holding her child, slipped, sank and was gone; one heard no cry,
no sigh, nought but a little child weeping. More than an hour elapsed,
before her companions could bring poles and ropes, from the nearest
house, in order to afford assistance. After great exertion they drew
from the ice-gap, what appeared to be two lifeless bodies; every
means were employed and they succeeded in calling the child back to
life, but not the mother. So the old grandfather received instead of a
daughter, a daughter's son in his house; the little one, who laughed
more than he wept, but, who now, seemed to have lost this custom. A
change in him, had certainly taken place, in the cleft of the glacier,
in the wonderful cold world; where, according to the belief of the
Swiss peasant, the souls of the damned are incarcerated until the day
of judgment.

Not unlike water, which after long journeying, has been compressed into
blocks of green glass, the glaciers lie here, so that one huge mass of
ice is heaped on the other. The rushing stream roars below and melts
snow and ice; within, hollow caverns and mighty clefts open, this is a
wonderful palace of ice, and in it dwells the Ice-Maiden, the Queen of
the glaciers. She, the murderess, the destroyer, is half a child of air
and half the powerful ruler of the streams; therefore, she had received
the power, to elevate herself with the speed of the chamois to the
highest pinnacle of the snow-topped mountain; where the most daring
mountaineer had to hew his way, in order to take firm foot-hold. She
sails up t