Maurice spent in
unpacking and polishing his precious instruments, which, in the
incongruous setting of rough-hewn timbers and gaily painted Norse
furniture, looked almost fantastic. The maid who brought him his meals
(for he could waste no time in dining with the family) walked about on
tip-toe, as if she were in a sick-chamber, and occasionally stopped to
gaze at him with mingled curiosity and awe.

The Ormgrass farm consisted of a long, bleak stretch of hill-side, in
part overgrown with sweet-brier and juniper, and covered with large,
lichen-painted bowlders. Here and there was a patch of hardy winter
wheat, and at odd intervals a piece of brownish meadow. At the top of
the slope you could see the huge shining ridge of the glacier, looming
in threatening silence against the sky. Leaning, as it did, with a
decided impulse to the westward, it was difficult to resist the
impression that it had braced itself against the opposite mountain,
and thrown its whole enormous weight against the Ormgrass hills for
the purpose of forcing a passage down to the farm. To Maurice, at
least, this idea suggested itself with considerable vividness as, on
the second day after his arrival, he had his first complete view of
the glacier. He had approached it, not from below, but from the
western side, at the only point where ascent was possible. The vast
expanse of the ice lay in cold, ghastly shade; for the sun, which was
barely felt as a remote presence in the upper air, had not yet reached
the depths of the valley. A silence as of death reigned everywhere; it
floated up from the dim blue crevasses, it filled the air, it vibrated
on the senses as with a vague endeavor to be heard. Jake, carrying a
barometer, a surveyor's transit, and a multitude of smaller
instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a
young lad, Tharald Ormgrass's son, who had been engaged as a guide,
ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his
steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. But it would be futile for
one of the uninitiated to attempt to follow Maurice in his scientific
investigations; on such occasions he would have been extremely
uninteresting to outside humanity, simply because outside humanity was
the last thing he would have thought worth troubling himself about.
And still his unremitting zeal in the pursuit of his aim, and his cool
self-possession in the presence of danger, were not without a
sublimity of their ow