he would have to clamber over rocks and loose stones,
to pass close to the most dreadful precipices, and across foaming
mountain streams, till he reached the height at which the refreshing
green disappeared, with nothing visible but huge masses of brown and
gray rock; where no other sight met the eye but that of mountain tops
covered with perpetual snow and ice--a world dead and deserted, where
the familiar voices of nature were almost unknown; where no bird
carolled its love-song from the waving branch; where no sound was to be
heard save the muttered thunder of the avalanche, the roaring of the
cataracts which poured forth from the melting glaciers and made courses
for themselves through heaps of rough stones; and now and again the
harsh and discordant scream of a solitary vulture that with outspread
wings circled slowly aloft, piercing into the valleys with its keen eye
in search of prey. Into these wild and lonely regions Walter had to
climb in order to reach the lofty crag whereon the vulture--the
far-famed Laemmergeier of the Alps--had reared her eyrie.

But these difficulties had little terror for the cool-headed and
brave-hearted mountain youth, who had from his earliest days been
accustomed to roam on dizzy heights where the slightest false step would
have been destruction. He was determined to finish what he had begun;
and gratitude to the noble and generous stranger lent new courage to his
soul, and strength and endurance to his frame.

After a short rest he jumped up again, and renewed the toilsome ascent,
following slowly but steadily the dangerous track that led to the summit
of the mountain. His feet often slipped on the bare and polished rock;
sometimes he slid ten or twenty paces backward over loose pebbles, and
anon sank knee-deep in the snow which here and there filled the hollows;
but nothing daunted him or caused him to waver from his purpose. At last
he reached a broad sheet of ice with innumerable crevices and chasms, on
the further side of which a narrow ridge like the edge of a knife
stretched above a wild and lonely valley, the base of which yawned two
or three thousand feet below. At the extreme end of this ridge the nest
he was in search of was built on a small point of rock, the sides of
which descended precipitously into the depths below.

With his eye fixed on the distant crag, Walter commenced the passage of
the ice-field. The utmost caution being necessary at every step, he felt
caref