Loeche was now also covered by the snow, and the
houses could scarcely be distinguished, covered as they were by that
white cloak.

Then turning to the right, he reached the Laemmern glacier. He went along
with a mountaineer's long strides, striking the snow, which was as hard
as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with his piercing eyes, he
looked for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that
enormous, white expanse.

When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped and asked himself
whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk along
the moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining; the
snow was assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough
gusts over its crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill, vibrating
call; his voice sped through the deathlike silence in which the
mountains were sleeping; it reached the distance, over profound and
motionless waves of glacial foam, like the cry of a bird over the waves
of the sea; then it died away and nothing answered him.

He set to walk again. The sun had sunk yonder behind the mountain tops,
which were still purple with the reflection from the sky; but the depths
of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt
frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude,
the winter death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were
going to stop and to freeze his blood, to make his limbs grow stiff, and
to turn him into a motionless and frozen object; and he set off running,
fleeing towards his dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have
returned during his absence. He had taken another road; he would, no
doubt, be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his feet.

He soon came in sight of the inn, but no smoke rose from it. Ulrich
walked faster and opened the door; Sam ran up to him to greet him, but
Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunzi, in his alarm, turned round
suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner.
Then he re-lighted the fire and made the soup; hoping every moment to
see the old man come in. From time to time he went out, to see if he
were not coming in. It was quite night now, that wan night of the
mountains, a livid night, with the crescent moon, yellow and dim and
just disappearing behind the mountain tops, lit up on the edge of the
horizon.

Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and his feet,