“They tell me that another fresh body has been put into the house, since I last came down the mountain” remarked Pierre, who was quietly disposing of a mule in a manner more favorable for Adelheid to mount:  “the mastiff scents the dead.  It was this that brought him to the Refuge last night, Heaven be praised for the mercy!”

This was said with the indifference that habit is apt to create, for the usage of leaving bodies uninterred had no influence on the feelings of the guide, but it did not the less strike those who had descended from the convent.

“Thou art the last that came down thyself,” said one of the servants; “nor have any come up, but those who are now safe in the convent, taking their rest after last night’s tempest.”

“How canst utter this idle nonsense, Henri, when a fresh body is in the house!  This lady counted them but now, and there are four; three was the number that I showed the Piedmontese noble whom I led from Aoste, the day thou meanest!”

“Look to this;” said the clavier, turning abruptly away from Adelheid, whom he was on the point of helping into the saddle.

The men entered the gloomy vault, whence they soon returned bearing a body, which they placed with its back against the wall of the building, in the open air.  A cloak was over the head and face, as if the garment had been thus arranged to exclude the cold.

“He hath perished the past night, mistaking the bone-house for the Refuge!” exclaimed the clavier:  “Maria and her Son intercede for his soul!”

“Is the unfortunate man truly dead?” asked the Genoese with more of worldly care, and with greater practice in the investigation of facts.  “The frozen sleep long before the currents of life cease entirely to run.”

The Augustine commanded his followers to remove the cloak, though with little hope that the suggestion of the other would prove true.  When the cloth was raised, the collapsed and pallid features of one in whom life was unequivocally extinct were exposed to view.  Unlike most of those that perish of cold, who usually sink into the long sleep of eternity by a gradual numbness and a slowly increasing unconsciousness, there was an expression of pain in the countenance of the stranger which seemed to announce that his parting struggles had been severe, and that he had resigned his hold of that mysterious principle which connects the soul to the body, with anguish.  A shriek from Christine interrupted the awful gaze of the travellers, and drew their looks in another direction.  She was clinging to the neck of Adelheid, her arms appearing to writhe with the effort to incorporate heir two bodies into one.

“It is he!  It is he!” muttered the frightened and half frantic girl, burying her pale face in the bosom of her friend.  “Oh!  God!—­it is he!”

“Of whom art thou speaking, dear?” demanded the wondering, but not the less awe-struck, Adelheid, believing that the weakened nerves of the poor girl were unstrung by the horror of the spectacle—­“it is a traveller like ourselves, that has unhappily perished in the very storm from which, by the kindness of Providence, we have been permitted to escape.  Thou shouldst not tremble thus; for, fearful as it is, he is in a condition to which we all must come.”