One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving deep
and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly, and was
by degrees burying them under a thick, dark coverlet of foam, and that
lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and
the windows, to dig out a passage and to cut steps to get over this
frozen powder, which a twelve hours frost had made as hard as the
granite of the moraines.

They lived like prisoners, and did not venture outside their abode. They
had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich Kunzi
undertook the scouring, washing, and everything that belonged to
cleanliness. He also chopped up the wood, while Gaspard Hari did the
cooking and attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was
interrupted by long games at cards or dice, and they never quarreled,
but were always calm and placid. They were never even impatient or
ill-humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a
stock of patience for their wintering on the top of the mountain.

Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and
occasionally he killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at
Schwarenbach, and they reveled in fresh meat. One morning he went out as
usual. The thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and as
the sun had not yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals at
the approaches to the Wildstrubel, and Ulrich, being alone, remained in
bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but he would not have
dared to give way like that to his inclination in the presence of the
old guide, who was ever an early riser. He breakfasted leisurely with
Sam, who also spent his days and nights in sleeping in front of the
fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at the solitude, and
was seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one is by the
desire of an invincible habit, and so he went out to meet his companion,
who was to return at four o'clock.

The snow had leveled the whole deep valley, filled up the _crevasses_,
obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that
between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white,
regular, dazzling and frozen surface. For three weeks, Ulrich had not
been to the edge of the precipice, from which he had looked down onto
the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which
led to Wildstrubel.