“You hear?—­has very pressing occasion to get across, must cross.  We want no advice and no help.  I am mountain-born, and act as Guide.  Do not worry us by talking about it, but let us have supper, and wine, and bed.”

All through the intense cold of the night, the same awful stillness.  Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or redden the snow.  The same interminable waste of deathly white; the same immovable air; the same monotonous gloom in the sky.

“Travellers!” a friendly voice called to them from the door, after they were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in hand, as yesterday; “recollect!  There are five places of shelter, near together, on the dangerous road before you; and there is the wooden cross, and there is the next Hospice.  Do not stray from the track.  If the Tourmente comes on, take shelter instantly!”

“The trade of these poor devils!” said Obenreizer to his friend, with a contemptuous backward wave of his hand towards the voice.  “How they stick to their trade!  You Englishmen say we Swiss are mercenary.  Truly, it does look like it.”

They had divided between the two knapsacks such refreshments as they had been able to obtain that morning, and as they deemed it prudent to take.  Obenreizer carried the wine as his share of the burden; Vendale, the bread and meat and cheese, and the flask of brandy.

They had for some time laboured upward and onward through the snow—­which was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth elsewhere—­and they were still labouring upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall.  At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily.  After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes.  Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound and force imprisoned until now was let loose.

One of the dismal galleries through which the road is carried at that perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of great strength, was near at hand.  They struggled into it, and the storm raged wildly.  The noise of the wind, the noise of the water, the thundering down of displaced masses of rock and snow, the awful voices with which not only that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, the violent revolving of the snow which beat and broke it into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling sounds for silence:  these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to chill the blood, though the fierce wind, made actually solid by ice and snow, had failed to chill it.

Obenreizer, walking to and fro in the gallery without ceasing, signed to Vendale to help him unbuckle his knapsack.  They could see each other, but could not have heard each other speak.  Vendale complying, Obenreizer produced his bottle of wine, and poured some out, motioning Vendale to take that for warmth’s sake, and not brandy.  Vendale again complying, Obenreizer seemed to drink after him, and the two walked backwards and forwards side by side; both well knowing that to rest or sleep would be to die.