outlet to this hut, was an orifice that resembled a window rather than a door.  They moved cautiously to the spot, looking into the gloomy, cavern-like room, as timidly as the hare throws his regards about him before he ventures from his cover.  Four human forms were reposing deep in the vault, with their backs sustained against the walls.  They slept profoundly too, for the curious but startled girls gazed at them long, and retired without causing them to awake.

“We have not been alone on the mountain in this terrible night,” whispered Adelheid, gently urging the trembling Christine away from the spot; “thou seest that other travellers have been taking their rest near us; most probably after perils and fatigues like our own.”

Christine drew closer to the side of her more experienced friend, like the young of the dove hovering near the mother-bird when first venturing from the nest, and they returned to the refuge they had quitted, for the cold was still so intense as to render its protection grateful.  At the door they were met by Pierre, the vigilant old man having awakened as soon as the light crossed his eyes.

“We are not alone here;” said Adelheid, pointing to the other stone-covered roof—­“there are travellers sleeping in yonder building, too.”

“Their sleep will be long, lady;” answered the guide, shaking his head solemnly.  “With two of them it has already lasted a twelvemonth and the third has slept where you saw him since the fall of the avalanche in the last days of April.”

Adelheid recoiled a step, for his meaning was too plain to be misunderstood.  After looking at her gentle companion, she demanded if those they had seen were in truth the bodies of travellers who had perished on the mountain.

“Of no other, lady,” returned Pierre, “This hut is for the living—­that for the dead.  So near are the two to each other, when men journey on these wild rocks in winter.  I have known him who passed a short and troubled night here, begin a sleep in the other before the turn of the day that is not only deep enough, but which will last for ever.  One of the three that thou hast just seen was a guide like myself:  he was buried in the falling snow at the spot where the path leaves the plain of Velan below us.  Another is a pilgrim that perished in as clear a night as ever shone on St. Bernard, and merely for having taking a cup too much to cheer his way.  The third is a poor vine-dresser that was coming from Piedmont into our Swiss valleys to follow his calling, when death overtook him in an ill-advised slumber, in which he was so unwise as to indulge at nightfall.  I found his body myself on that naked rock, the day after we had drunk together in friendship at Aoste, and with my own hands was he placed among the others.”

“And such is the burial a Christian gets in this inhospitable country!”