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 the snow itself
and spread abroad in space. By degrees the highest distant summits
assumed a delicate, pink flesh color, and the red sun appeared behind
the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.

Ulrich Kunsi set off again, walking like a hunter, bent over, looking
for tracks, and saying to his dog: "Seek, old fellow, seek!"

He was descending the mountain now, scanning the depths closely, and
from time to time shouting, uttering aloud, prolonged cry, which soon
died away in that silent vastness. Then he put his ear to the ground to
listen. He thought he could distinguish a voice, and he began to run and
shouted again, but he heard nothing more and sat down, exhausted and in
despair. Toward midday he breakfasted and gave Sam, who was as tired as
himself, something to eat also, and then he recommenced his search.

When evening came he was still walking, and he had walked more than
thirty miles over the mountains. As he was too far away to return home
a