[Illustration: HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.]

The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates: there
were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all kinds of
useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition for hands
and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the
low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was
scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between
the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and
illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted fullness.

Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we learned
from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that shortly
after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a gentleman
from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the wirth his
intention of ascending one of the three great mountains rising from
the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high), the Wild
Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower, but perhaps
even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of untrodden
summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever young fellow,
Johann Ausserkofer, a friend of Jakob's, and whose home we had passed
on the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended
the Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year,
and now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
party started by torchlight at two o'clock in the morning.

Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might detect