and shouted: "Is it you, Gaspard?" with all the strength
of his lungs. But there was no reply, no murmur, no groan, nothing. It
was quite dark, and the snow looked wan.

The wind had risen, that icy wind that cracks the rocks, and leaves
nothing alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts,
which were more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the
desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" And then
he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook
with terror and with a bound he was inside the inn, when he shut and
bolted the door, and then he fell into a chair, trembling all over, for
he felt certain that his comrade had called him, at the moment he was
expiring.

He was sure of that, as sure as one is of being alive, or of eating a
piece of bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and three
nights somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep, untrodden ravines
whose whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He had been
dying for two days and three nights and he had just then died, thinking
of his comrade. His soul, almost before it was released, had taken its
flight to the inn where Ulrich was sleeping, and it had called him by
that terrible and mysterious power which the spirits of the dead have,
to haunt the living. That voiceless soul had cried to the wornout soul
of the sleeper; it had uttered its last farewell, or its reproach, or
its curse on the man who had not searched carefully enough.

And Ulrich felt that it was there, quite close to him, behind the wall,
behind the door which he had just fastened. It was wandering about, like
a night bird, which lightly touches a lighted window with his wings,
and the terrified young man was ready to scream with horror. He wanted
to run away, but did not dare to go out; he did not dare, and he should
never dare to do it in the future, for that phantom would remain there
day and night, round the inn, as long as the old man's body was not
recovered and had not been deposited in the consecrated earth of a
churchyard.

When it was daylight, Kunzi recovered some of his courage at the return
of the bright sun. He prepared his meal, gave his dog some food, and
then remained motionless on a chair, tortured at heart as he thought of
the old man lying on the snow, and then, as soon as night once more
covered the mountains, new terrors assailed him. He now walked up and
down the dark kitc