As they now were on their way home in the gayest spirits--his uncle
playing one of his youthful melodies on his flute--they suddenly
heard not far from them a singular sound; they looked sideways, they
gazed aloof and saw high above them the snow covering of the rugged
shelf of the rock, waving like an outspread piece of linen when
agitated by the wind. The icy waves cracked like slabs of marble, they
broke, dissolved in foaming, rushing water and sounded like a muffled
thunder-clap. It was an avalanche rolling down, not over Rudy and his
uncle, but near, only too near to them.

"Hold fast, Rudy," cried he, "firm, with your whole strength!"

And Rudy clasped the trunk of a tree; his uncle climbed into its
branches and held fast, whilst the avalanche rolled many fathoms away
from them. But the air-drift of the blustering storm, which
accompanied it, bowed down the trees and bushes around them like dry
reeds and threw them beyond. Rudy lay cast on the earth; the trunk of
the tree on which he had held was as though sawed off, and its crown
was hurled still farther along. His uncle lay amongst the broken
branches, with his head shattered; his hands were yet warm, but his
face was no longer to be recognized. Rudy stood pale and trembling;
this was the first terror of his life, the first hour of fear that he
had ever known.

Late in the evening, he returned with his message of death to his
home, which was now one of sorrow.

The wife stood without words, without tears, and not until the corpse
was brought home did her sorrow find an outburst. The poor cretin
crept to his bed and was not seen all day, but towards evening he came