you manage to get down there?"

"Get down there?" said the lad contemptuously; "why, I'd race you to the
bottom."

"No doubt, and be down first," said Dale quietly; "but I should be ready
to go on, and you would want carrying to the nearest chalet to wait for
a surgeon."

"What, after getting down that bit of a place?"

"You stupid fellow," said Dale testily; "that bit of a place is a
precipice of five hundred feet. How am I to impress upon you that
everything here is far bigger than you think? Look here," he continued,
pointing: "do you see that cow yonder, on that bit of green slope beside
those overhanging rocks?"

"No; I can see a little dog by a heap of stones."

"That will do for an example," said Dale. "Here, Melchior, is not that
a cow just across the stream there?"

"Wait a moment," cried Saxe eagerly. "I say it's a little dog. Who's
right?"

"You are both wrong," said the guide, smiling. "There is a man here has
a chalet behind the pines. He comes up the valley with his cattle for
the summer, when the snow is gone."

"Is there snow here in winter, then?" said Saxe.

"The valley is nearly full in winter. No one can come up here."

"But that isn't a cow," cried Saxe, pointing.

"No," said the guide, smiling; "it is Simon Andregg's big bull."

"Well!" cried Saxe, shading his eyes and staring down at the animal,
which looked small enough to be a dog.

"You don't believe him?" said Dale, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know," said Saxe; "I suppose I do. But I was thinking that
he might have made a mistake. Shall I go first?"

"No, herr; I am the guide," said Melchior quietly; and he began the
descent pretty rapidly, but stopped at the foot of each more difficult
part to look up and wait for the others. Sometimes he drove the sharp
end of his ice-axe into the earth or some crevice, and held it there to
act as a step for the others to descend; and at other times he pressed
himself against the rock and offered his shoulders as resting-places for
their feet, constantly on the watch to lessen the difficulties and guard
against dangers in a place where a slip of a few feet might have
resulted in the unfortunate person who fell rolling lower with
increasing impetus, and the slip developing into a terrible accident.

"It is farther than I thought," said Saxe, as they reached the bottom of
the steep bluff from which they had viewed the glacier; and he stepped
back a few yards to look up. "The place