was so sad.

There were two nimble guides in the neighbourhood, and they were about
to cross the mountains; they were to descend to the other side of the
Gemmi, and Rudy followed them on foot. This was a severe march for
such a little chap, but he had strength and courage, and felt not
fatigue.

The swallows accompanied them a part of the way. They sang: "We and
you! You and us!" The road went over the rapid Lütschine, which
rushes forth from the black clefts of the glacier of Grindelwald, in
many little streams. The fallen timber and the quarry-stones serve as
bridges; they pass the alder-bush and descend the mountain where the
glacier has detached itself from the mountain side; they cross over
the glacier, over the blocks of ice, and go around them. Rudy was
obliged to creep a little, to walk a little, his eyes sparkled with
delight, and he trod as firmly with his iron-shod mountain shoes, as
though he wished to leave his foot-prints where he had stepped. The
black mud which the mountain stream had poured upon the glacier gave
it a calcined appearance, but the bluish-green, glassy ice still shone
through it. They were obliged to go around the little ponds which
were dammed up by blocks of ice; during these wanderings they came too
near a large stone, which lay tottering on the brink of a crevice in
the ice. The stone lost its equilibrium, it fell, rolled and the echo
resounded from the deep hollow paths of the glacier.

Up, ever up; the glacier stretched itself on high--as a river, of
wildly heaped up masses of ice, compressed among the steep cliffs. For
an instant Rudy thought on what they had told him, about his having
laid with his mother, in one of these cold-breathing chasms. Such