of which one can see into the depths of the earth, and watch the metal gleaming and glittering in its veins. And although you have not said so, yet I know that you are one of the mysterious strangers who come from far-off lands to seek the gold of our mountains, which is hidden from our dim eyes. Oh, take me with you!"

The old man turned his face to the boy. "That is idle curiosity, my son," he said gravely, and his eyes shone almost as brightly as the mirror had a few minutes before; "stay at home and tend thy herds, as a good boy should."

"Oh no, sir," begged Hans earnestly; "I have always longed to see the wonders of the mountains, and I will be quiet and silent as is befitting in the presence of such marvels, and I will help you and serve you to the best of my power. Take me with you!"

The old man thought a minute, glanced searchingly into the boy's eyes, who had come nearer to him in his earnestness, and then he said--"Come, then, and remember thy promise."

They stepped out together, shut the trap-door behind them, and clambered up to the top of the rock, from which the broad footpath led up to the heights and abysses of the mountain. The moon poured its mystic radiance down from the deep blue sky of night, and the young foliage of the beech wood gleamed like silver as it fluttered in the breeze. Not a footstep was heard on the mossy ground, only their shadows glided in company with the lonely wanderers, who in silent haste pressed on deeper into the recesses of the mountains. The wood lay behind them, and the path led to a ravine, at the bottom of which a raging torrent rushed; they stood now at its edge.

None save Tyrol's boldest mountain climbers know this path, and even they, though provided with ice-shoes and alpenstocks, tread its steep ascent with trembling hearts. But the little man seemed to heed no danger; fearlessly he set his foot upon the highest point, and securely, as if on level ground, he went down the side of the precipice, where one false step would have been certain death. The boy followed him with a beating heart. The moonlight broke through the overhanging bushes and the lofty rocks overhead, and made its way down into the ravine.The wanderers stood now at the edge of the raging torrent, and walked along it to the high rock over which the glacier stream fell into its rocky bed, and which seemed to them, as it stood veiled in night, like one of the giants of old who, the old legends tell us, were turned to stone. Even in the distance they had seen the moving cloud of vapour above its 

 Prev. P 30/163 next