to offer their help. They informed us that four more men engaged in
wood-felling in a forest an hour or so distant would also be delighted
to join us, as they did at the close of their day's work.

The evening was spent in discussing the details of the approaching
exploit and getting our various arrangements and implements in order. At
nine o'clock, leaving Tomerl and his wife their accustomed bed on the
top of the stove, the rest of us retired to our common bed-room, the
hayloft. We were up again by three, and an hour later were all ready to
start. Tomerl led the way, but stopped ere we lost sight of the cottage
to shout a last "jodler" to his wife, who returned the greeting with a
clear, bell-like voice, though her heart was doubtless beating fast
under her smartly-laced bodice.

Three hours later we had reached the gorge, and after some difficult
scrambling and wading through turbulent torrents we arrived at the base
of the Falknerwand, which rises perpendicularly upward of nine hundred
feet--an altitude diminished in appearance by the tenfold greater height
of the surrounding mountains. Finding, after a few minutes' close
observation, that nothing could be done from the base of the cliff, we
proceeded to scale it by a circuitous route up a practicable but
nevertheless terribly steep incline. Safely arrived at the top, we threw
down our burdens and began to reconnoitre the terrain, which we did
_ventre a terre_, bending over the cliff as far as we dared. Great
was our dismay to perceive that some eighty or ninety feet below us a
narrow rocky ledge, which had escaped our notice when looking up from
the foot of the cliff, projected shelf-wise from the face of the
precipice, shutting out all view of a crevice which we had descried from
the bottom, and which, as we anticipated, contained the eyrie.

After consulting some time, we decided to lower ourselves down to this
rock-band, and make it the base of our further movements, instead of
operating, as we had intended, from the crest of the cliff, where
everything but for this obstacle would have been tenfold easier. Posting
one of the men at the top of the cliff to lower the heavy rope, three
hundred feet in length, by means of a cord, we descended to the ledge,
which was nowhere more than three feet in width, and in several places
scarcely over a foot and a half. Standing in a single row on this
miniature platform, we had to manipulate the rope with a yawning gulf
some