while he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have
broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step and
dislocated his ankle. And perhaps he was lying on the snow, overcome and
stiff with the cold, in agony of mind, lost and perhaps shouting for
help, calling with all his might, in the silence of the night.

But where? The mountain was so vast, so rugged, so dangerous in places,
especially at that time of the year, that it would have required ten or
twenty guides to walk for a week in all directions, to find a man in
that immense space. Ulrich Kunzi, however, made up his mind to set out
with Sam, if Gaspard did not return by one in the morning; and he made
his preparations.

He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel climbing
irons, tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist and looked to see
that his iron-shod stick and his axe, which served to cut steps in the
ice, were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth
and the great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking
as regularly as a heart beating, in its case of resounding wood.

He waited, with his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and he
shivered when the wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck
twelve, and he trembled. Then, as he felt frightened and shuddering, he
put some water on the fire, so that he might have some hot coffee before
starting, and when the clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the
door and went off in the direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he
mounted, scaling the rocks by means of his climbing irons, cutting into
the ice, advancing continually and occasionally hauling up the dog, who
remained below at the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by
means of the rope. It was about six o'clock when he reached one of the
summits to which old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited
till it should be daylight.

The sky was growing pale over head, and suddenly a strange light,
springing, nobody could tell whence, illuminated the immense ocean of
pale mountain summits, which stretched for a thousand leagues around
him. One might have said that this vague brightness arose from the snow
itself, in order to spread itself into space. By degrees the highest,
distant summits assumed a delicate, fleshlike rose color, and the red
sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.

Ulrich Kunzi set off again, w