round them.

"Come, my boy," old Gaspard said, "we have no women now, so we must get
our own dinner ready. Go and peel the potatoes." And they both sat down
on wooden stools and began to prepare the soup.

The next morning seemed very long to Kunsi. Old Hari smoked and spat
on the hearth, while the young man looked out of the window at the
snow-covered mountain opposite the house.

In the afternoon he went out, and going over yesterday's ground again,
he looked for the traces of the mule that had carried the two women.
Then when he had reached the Gemmi Pass, he laid himself down on his
stomach and looked at Loeche.

The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, from
which it was sheltered by the pine woods which protected it on all
sides. Its low houses looked like paving stones in a large meadow
from above. Hauser's little daughter was there now in one of those
gray-colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to be able
to make them out separately. How he would have liked to go down while he
was yet able!

But the sun had disappeared behind the lofty crest of the Wildstrubel
and the young man returned to the chalet. Daddy Hari was smoking, and
when he saw his mate come in he proposed a game of cards to him, and
they sat down opposite each other, on either side of the table. They
played for a long time a simple game called brisque and then they had
supper and went to bed.

The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without any
fresh snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and
other rare birds which ventured on those frozen heights, while Ulrich
returned regularly to the Gemmi Pass to look at the village. Then they
played cards, dice or dominoes and lost and won a trifle, just to create
an interest in the game.

One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving, deep
and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly and was
by degrees burying them under a thick, heavy coverlet of foam. That
lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door
and the windows, to dig out a passage and to cut steps to get over
this frozen powder, which a twelve hours' frost had made as hard as the
granite of the moraines.

They lived like prisoners and did not venture outside their abode. They
had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich
Kunsi undertook the scouring, washing and everything that bel