that
distinguished his native land, rude and ragged faces of rock, frozen
glaciers, and deep ravine-like valleys and glens, seemed to him to be
types of his own stormy, unprofitable, and fruitless life, and to foretell
a career which, though it might have touches of grandeur, was doomed to be
barren of all that is genial and consolatory.

All in and about the convent was still. The mountain had an imposing air
of deep solitude amid the wildest natural magnificence. Few travellers had
passed since the storm, and, luckily for those who, under the peculiar
circumstances in which they were placed, so much desired privacy, all of
these had diligently gone their several ways. None were left, therefore,
on the Col, but those who had an interest in the serious investigations
which were about to take place. An officer of justice from Sion, wearing
the livery of the Valais, appeared at a window, a sign that the regular
authorities of the country had taken cognizance of the murder; but
disappearing, the young man, to all external appearance, was left in the
solitary possession of the pass. Even the dogs had been kennelled, and the
pious monks were healthfully occupied in the religious offices of the
vespers.

Sigismund turned his eye upward to the apartment in which Adelheid and his
sister dwelt, but as the solemn moment in which so much was to be decided
drew nearer, they also had withdrawn into themselves, ceasing to hold
communion, even by means of the eyes, with aught that might divert their
holy and pure thoughts from ceaseless and intense devotional reflections.
Until now he had been occasionally favored with an answering and kind look
from one or the other of these single hearted and affectionate girls, both
of whom he so warmly loved, though with sentiments so different. It seemed
that they too had at last left him to his isolated and hopeless existence.
Sensible that this passing thought was weak and unmanly, the young man
renewed his walk, and instead of turning as before, he moved slowly on,
stopping only when he had reached the opening of the little chapel of the
dead.

Unlike the building lower down the path, the bone-house at the convent is
divided into two apartments; the exterior, and one that may be called the
interior, though both are open to the weather. The former contained piles
of disjointed human bones, bleached by the storms that beat in at the
windows, while the latter is consecrated to the covering of t