The snow came driving heavily into the gallery by the upper end at which they would pass out of it, if they ever passed out; for greater dangers lay on the road behind them than before.  The snow soon began to choke the arch.  An hour more, and it lay so high as to block out half the returning daylight.  But it froze hard now, as it fell, and could be clambered through or over.  The violence of the mountain storm was gradually yielding to steady snowfall.  The wind still raged at intervals, but not incessantly; and when it paused, the snow fell in heavy flakes.

They might have been two hours in their frightful prison, when Obenreizer, now crunching into the mound, now creeping over it with his head bowed down and his body touching the top of the arch, made his way out.  Vendale followed close upon him, but followed without clear motive or calculation.  For the lethargy of Basle was creeping over him again, and mastering his senses.

How far he had followed out of the gallery, or with what obstacles he had since contended, he knew not.  He became roused to the knowledge that Obenreizer had set upon him, and that they were struggling desperately in the snow.  He became roused to the remembrance of what his assailant carried in a girdle.  He felt for it, drew it, struck at him, struggled again, struck at him again, cast him off, and stood face to face with him.

“I promised to guide you to your journey’s end,” said Obenreizer, “and I have kept my promise.  The journey of your life ends here.  Nothing can prolong it.  You are sleeping as you stand.”

“You are a villain.  What have you done to me?”

“You are a fool.  I have drugged you.  You are doubly a fool, for I drugged you once before upon the journey, to try you.  You are trebly a fool, for I am the thief and forger, and in a few moments I shall take those proofs against the thief and forger from your insensible body.”

The entrapped man tried to throw off the lethargy, but its fatal hold upon him was so sure that, even while he heard those words, he stupidly wondered which of them had been wounded, and whose blood it was that he saw sprinkled on the snow.

“What have I done to you,” he asked, heavily and thickly, “that you should be—­so base—­a murderer?”

“Done to me?  You would have destroyed me, but that you have come to your journey’s end.  Your cursed activity interposed between me, and the time I had counted on in which I might have replaced the money.  Done to me?  You have come in my way—­not once, not twice, but again and again and again.  Did I try to shake you off in the beginning, or no?  You were not to be shaken off.  Therefore you die here.”

Vendale tried to think coherently, tried to speak coherently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid.  All in vain, all in vain!  He stumbled, and fell heavily forward on the brink of the deep chasm.