I kept my head down, climbing steadily.  But with the tail of my eye I could see that the hills had a sprinkling of snow—­the legacy of the Thal wind which last night brought the moisture up the valley.  Only the crags of the Piz Langrev were black above me, with a few white streaks in the crevices where the snow lies all the year.  The cliffs were too steep for the snow to lie upon them, the season too far advanced for it to remain on the lower slopes.

The moon was lying over on her back, and the stars tingled through the frosty air.  The lake lay black beneath on a grey world, plain as a blot of ink on a boy’s copybook.

Yet I had only been climbing among the rocks a very few moments when every nerve was thrilling with warmth and all the arteries of the body were filled with a rushing tide of jubilant life.  “This is noble!” I said to myself, as if I had never had a thought of retreat.  A glow of heat came through my woollen gloves from the black rocks up which I climbed.

But I had gradually been getting out of the clear path on the face of the rocks into a kind of gully.  I did not like the look of the place.  There was a ground and polished look about the rocks at the sides which did not please me.  I have seen the like among the Clints of Minnigaff, where the spouts of shingle make their way over the cliff.  In the cleft was a kind of curious snow, dry like sand, creaking and binding together under foot—­amazingly like pounded ice.

In the twinkling of an eye I had proof that I was right.  There was a kind of slushy roaring above, a sharp crack or two as of some monster whip, and a sudden gust filled the gully.  There was just time for me to throw myself sideways into a convenient cleft, and to draw feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and high up the ravine on either side, was filled with tumbling, hissing snow, while the rocks on either side echoed with the musketry spatter of stones and ice-pellets.

I felt something cold on my temple.  As the glove came down from touching it, there was a stain on the wool.  A button of ice, no larger than a shilling, spinning on its edge, had neatly clipped a farthing’s-worth out of the skin—­as neatly as the house-surgeon of an hospital could do it.

At this point the story of a good Highland minister came up in my mind inopportunely, as these things will.  He was endeavouring to steer a boat-load of city young ladies to a landing-place.  A squall was bursting; the harbour was difficult.  One of the girls annoyed him by jumping up and calling anxiously, “O, where are we going to?  Where are we going to?” “If you do not sit down and keep still, my young leddy,” said the minister-pilot succinctly, “that will verra greatly depend on how you was brocht up!”

The place at which I remembered this might have been a fine place for an observatory.  It was not so convenient for reminiscence.  Here the path ended.  I was as far as Turn Back.  I therefore tried more round to the right.  The rocks were so slippery with the melted snow of yesterday that the nails in my boots refused to grip.  But presently there, remained only a snow-slope, and a final pull up a great white-fringed bastion of rock.  Here was the summit; and even as I reached it, over the Bernina the morning was breaking clear.