incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame
Hauser;" but his thoughts seemed far away, and his calm features
remained unmoved.

They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface extended to the
bottom of the valley. On the right, the Daubenhorn showed its black
rocks, rising up in a peak above the enormous moraines of the Loemmeon
glacier, which rose above the Wildstrubel. As they approached the neck
of the Gemmi, where the descent to Loeche begins, they suddenly beheld
the immense horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad,
deep valley of the Rhone separated them.

In the distance, there was a group of white, unequal flat or pointed
mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two
peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty
and formidable pyramid of Mont Cervin, that slayer of men, and the
Dent-Blanche, that terrible coquette.

Then, beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrible
abyss, they perceived Loeche, where houses looked as grains of sand
which had been thrown in that enormous crevice, which finishes and
closes the Gemmi, and which opens, down below, onto the Rhone.

The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which goes turning and
twisting continually, and which comes back fantastically and strangely,
along the side of the mountain, as far as the almost invisible little
village at its feet. The women jumped into the snow, and the two old men
joined them. "Well," father Hauser said, "good-bye, and keep up your
spirits till next year, my friends," and old Hari replied: "Till next
year."

They embraced each other, and then Madame Hauser in her turn, offered
her cheek, and the girl did the same.

When Ulrich Kunzi's turn came, he whispered in Louise's ear: "Do not
forget those up yonder," and she replied: "no," in such a low voice,
that he guessed what she had said, without hearing it. "Well, adieu,"
Jean Hauser repeated, "and don't fall ill." And going before the two
women, he commenced the descent, and soon all three disappeared at the
first turn in the road, while the two men returned to the inn at
Schwarenbach.

They walked slowly, side by side, without speaking. It was over, and
they would be alone together for four or five months. Then Gaspard Bari
began to relate his life last winter. He had remained with Michael
Canol, who was too old now to stand it; for an accident might happen
during t