The little girl did not weep.  After they had entered under the stone roof where they could not only sit comfortably, but also stand and walk about she seated herself close to him and kept very quiet.

“Mother will not be angry,” said Conrad, “we shall tell her of the heavy snow that has kept us, and she will say nothing; father will not, either.  And if we grow cold, why then we must slap our hands to our bodies as the woodcutters did, and then we shall grow warm again.”

“Yes, Conrad,” said the girl.

Sanna was not at all so inconsolable because they could not run down the mountain and get home as he might have thought; for the immense exertion, of whose severity the children hardly had any conception, made the very sitting down seem sweet to them, unspeakably sweet, and they did not resist.

But now hunger asserted itself imperiously.  Almost at the same time, both took their pieces of bread from their pockets and began to eat.  They ate also the other things, such as little pieces of cake, almonds, raisins, and other trifles, which grandmother had put into their pockets.

“Sanna, now we must clean the snow from our clothes,” said the boy, “so that we shall not become wet.”

“Yes, Conrad,” replied Sanna.

The children went before their little house.  Conrad first brushed off his little sister.  He grasped the corners of her coat and shook them, took off the hat he had put on her head, emptied it of snow and wiped off the snow that remained in it.  Then he rid himself as best he could of the snow that lay on him.

At that time it had entirely stopped snowing.  The children could not feel one flake descending.

They returned into their stone-hut and sat down.  Getting up had showed them how tired they really were, and they were glad to sit down again.  Conrad laid down the calfskin bag which he had strapped on his shoulders.  He took out the cloth in which grandmother had wrapped a pasteboard-box and several paper packages and put it about his shoulders for greater warmth.  He also took the two pieces of wheat-bread out of his wallet and gave Sanna both.  The child ate them most eagerly.  A part of them, however, she gave back to Conrad as she saw he was not eating anything.  He accepted it and ate it.

From that time on, the children merely sat and looked.  As far as the eye could reach in the twilight there was nothing but snow, whose minute crystals began to scintillate in a strange manner as if they had absorbed the light of day and were emitting it again now.

Night fell with the rapidity usual in high altitudes.  Soon it was dark all about, only the snow continued to glimmer faintly.  Not only had it stopped snowing but the clouds began to grow thin and to part, for the children saw the gleam of a star.  As the snow really emitted light, as it were, and the clouds no longer hung down from the sky, they could see from their cave how the snowy hillocks round about were sharply outlined against the dark sky.  The cave was warmer than it had been at any other place during the day, and so the children rested, clinging closely to each other and even forgot to be afraid of the darkness.  Soon the stars multiplied, they gleamed forth now here, now there, until it seemed that there was not a single cloud left in the whole sky.