on]

Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid himself; but
Schwartz was taken before the magistrate, fined for breaking the peace,
and, having drunk out his last penny the evening before, was thrown into
prison till he should pay.

When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, and determined to set out
immediately for the Golden River. How to get the holy water, was the
question. He went to the priest, but the priest could not give any holy
water to so abandoned a character. So Hans went to vespers in the
evening for the first time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing
himself, stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph.

Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy water into a
strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some meat in a basket, slung
them over his back, took his alpine staff in his hand, and set off for
the mountains.

[Illustration]

On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and as he looked
in at the windows, whom should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out
of the bars, and looking very disconsolate.

"Good morning, brother," said Hans; "have you any message for the King
of the Golden River?"

Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars with all his
strength; but Hans only laughed at him, and advising him to make himself
comfortable till he came back again, shouldered his basket, shook the
bottle of holy water in Schwartz's face till it frothed again, and
marched off in the highest spirits in the world.

It was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one happy, even with
no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched
along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains--their lower
cliffs in pale grey shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating
vapour, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran
in sharp touches of ruddy colour, along the angular crags, and pierced,
in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far above,
shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered
into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit
snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far
beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but
purer and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the
eternal snow.

The Golden River, which sprang from one of the lower and snowless
elevations, was