Crash!  Why, what was this?  I still lived.  I was in water, for I could feel its chill, and going down, down, till I thought I should never rise again.  But rise I did, though my lungs were nigh to bursting first.  As I floated up towards the top I remembered the crash, which told me that I had passed through ice.  Therefore I should meet ice at the surface again.  Oh! to think that after surviving so much I must be drowned like a kitten and beneath a sheet of ice.  My hands touched it.  There it was above me shining white like glass.  Heaven be praised!  My head broke through; in this low and sheltered gorge it was but a film no thicker than a penny formed by the light frost of the previous night.  So I rose from the deep and stared about me, treading water with my feet.

Then I saw the gladdest sight that ever my eyes beheld, for on the right, not ten yards away, the water running from his hair and beard, was Leo.  Leo alive, for he broke the thin ice with his arms as he struggled towards the shore from the deep river.[*] He saw me also, and his grey eyes seemed to start out of his head.

[*] Usually, as we learned afterwards, the river at this spot was quite shallow; only a foot or two in depth.  It was the avalanche that by damming it with fallen heaps of snow had raised its level very many feet.  Therefore, to this avalanche, which had threatened to destroy us, we in reality owed our lives, for had the stream stood only at its normal height we must have been dashed to pieces upon the stones.  —­L.  H. H.

“Still living, both of us, and the precipice passed!” he shouted in a ringing, exultant voice.  “I told you we were led.”

“Aye, but whither?” I answered as I too fought my way through the film of ice.

Then it was I became aware that we were no longer alone, for on the bank of the river, some thirty yards from us, stood two figures, a man leaning upon a long staff and a woman.  He was a very old man, for his eyes were horny, his snow-white hair and beard hung upon the bent breast and shoulders, and his sardonic, wrinkled features were yellow as wax.  They might have been those of a death mask cut in marble.  There, clad in an ample, monkish robe, and leaning upon the staff, he stood still as a statue and watched us.  I noted it all, every detail, although at the time I did not know that I was doing so, as we broke our way through the ice towards them and afterwards the picture came back to me.  Also I saw that the woman, who was very tall, pointed to us.

Nearer the bank, or rather to the rock edge of the river, its surface was free of ice, for here the stream ran very swiftly.  Seeing this, we drew close together and swam on side by side to help each other if need were.  There was much need, for in the fringe of the torrent the strength that had served me so long seemed to desert me, and I became helpless; numbed, too, with the biting coldness of the water.  Indeed, had not Leo grasped my clothes I think that I should have been swept away by the current to perish.  Thus aided I fought on a while, till he said—­“I am going under.  Hold to the rope end.”