Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or in the fir woods.  Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn at night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her too horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any moment drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over her own tale.

One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we determined to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of fir wood rose immediately behind the huts.  We were anxious to see what lay on the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating climb we learned that the mountain was but a huge overhanging shoulder, the rocky head of the giant rising up in the midst of wide sweeping moors some six miles distant.  We changed, therefore, the object of our excursion, determining to visit the highest Olm of the district, Ober Kofel.  Turning to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half an hour we had reached a solitary white cabin.  The door was firmly closed, but a pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently down, were sufficient signs of habitation.  A more lonely scene could not well be conceived.  No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles growing by the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone rushing on until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin.  Tawny, dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the traet or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to a platform of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain rhododendron grew, presenting a scene well worth the climb.  The view outward embraced the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far beyond the black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across the evening horizon.  Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high, peaked with snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was to the left.  There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely forth from this desert of snow.

We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the wind playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just been promoted to a bell.  At length the figure of a tall young man flitted in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved to be the solitary senner of Ober Kofel.  As he was the lord of the domain, and moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes ere he sat on the grass before us.  After giving us a welcome, he began talking to Moidel about the military exercises which were to begin again this week.

“The Ausserkofers,” he said, “went down for the drilling immediately after their ascent of the Wild Gall:  I am glad I was not drawn.”

Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the morrow for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel’s son, would arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.