spot where a few rough blades of grass grew between the blocks of stone
and the chamois passed quietly on over the snow-fields. Rudy walked
hurriedly, while the clouds of mist gathered round him. Suddenly he found
himself on the brink of a precipitous rock. The rain was falling in torrents.
He felt a burning thirst, his head was hot, and his limbs trembled with cold.
He seized his hunting-flask, but it was empty; he had not thought of filling
it before ascending the mountain. He had never been ill in his life, nor ever
experienced such sensations as those he now felt. He was so tired that he
could scarcely resist lying down at his full length to sleep, although the
ground was flooded with the rain. Yet when he tried to rouse himself a little,
every object around him danced and trembled before his eyes.
Suddenly he observed in the doorway of a hut newly built under the rock,
a young maiden. He did not remember having seen this hut before, yet there
it stood; and he thought, at first, that the young maiden was Annette, the
schoolmaster’s daughter, whom he had once kissed in the dance. The
maiden was not Annette; yet it seemed as if he had seen her somewhere
before, perhaps near Grindelwald, on the evening of his return home from
Interlachen, after the shooting-match.
“How did you come here?” he asked.
“I am at home,” she replied; “I am watching my flocks.”
“Your flocks!” he exclaimed; “where do they find pasture? There is
nothing here but snow and rocks.”
“Much you know of what grows here,” she replied, laughing. “not far
beneath us there is beautiful pasture-land. My goats go there. I tend them
carefully; I never miss one. What is once mine remains mine.”
“You are bold,” said Rudy.
“And so are you,” she answered.
“Have you any milk in the house?” he asked; “if so, give me some to
drink; my thirst is intolerable.”
