There is nothing more sadly impressive than the aspect of winter in a mountainous region.  The jagged crests of the precipices, the deep, dark ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable melancholy.  The silence is so profound that you hear a dead leaf rustling on the snow, or the needle of the fir dropping to the ground.  Such a silence is oppressive as the tomb; it urges on the mind the idea of man’s nothingness in the vastness of creation.

How frail a being is man!  Two winters together, without a summer between, would sweep him off the earth!

At times we felt it a necessity to be saying something if only to show that we were keeping up our spirits.

“Ah, we are getting on!  How fearfully cold!  Lieverle, what is the matter? what have you found now?”

Unfortunately Fox and Rappel were beginning to tire; they sank deeper in the snow and no longer neighed joyfully.

And added to this the endless mazes of the Black Forest wearied us too.  The old woman affected this solitary region greatly; here she had trotted round a deserted charcoal-burner’s hut; farther on she had torn out the roots that projected from a moss-grown rock; there she had sat at the foot of a tree, and that very recently—­not more than two hours since, for the track was quite fresh—­and our hope and our ardour rose together.  But the daylight was slowly fading away!

Very strangely, ever since our departure from Nideck we had met neither wood-cutters, nor charcoal-burners, nor timber-carriers.  At this season the silence and solitude of the Black Forest is as deep as that of the North-American steppes.

At five o’clock it was almost dark.  Sperver halted and said—­

“Fritz, my lad, we have started a couple of hours too late.  The she-wolf has had too long a start.  In ten minutes it will be as dark as a dungeon.  The best way would be to reach Roche Creuse, which is twenty minutes’ ride from here, light a good fire, and eat our provisions and empty our flasks.  When the moon is up we will follow the trail again, and unless the old hag is the foul fiend himself, ten to one we shall find her dead and stiff with cold against the foot of a tree, for nothing can live after such a tremendous tramp in weather like this.  Sebalt is the best walker in the Black Forest, and he would not have stood it.  Come, Fritz, what is your opinion?”

“I am not so mad as to think differently.  Besides, I am perishing with hunger!”

“Well, let us start again.”

He took the lead and passed into a close and narrow glen between two precipitous faces of rock.  The fir-trees met over our heads; under our feet ran a mere thread of the stream, and from time to time some ray from above was dimly reflected in the depths below and glinted with a dull leaden light.

The darkness was now such that I thought it prudent to drop my bridle on Rappel’s neck.  The steps of our horses on the slippery gravel awoke strange discordant sounds like the screaming of monkeys at play.  The echoes from rock to rock caught up and repeated every sound, and in the distance a tiny space of deep blue widened as we advanced; it was the issue from the glen.