But yesterday Flemming had come up the valley of the Saint Gothard Pass, through Amsteg, where the Kerstelenbach comes dashing down the Maderaner Thal, from its snowy cradle overhead.  The road is steep, and runs on zigzag terraces.  The sides of the mountains are barren cliffs; and from their cloud-capped summits, unheard amid the roar of the great torrent below, come streams of snowwhite foam, leaping from rock to rock, like the mountain chamois.  As you advance, the scene grows wilder and more desolate.  There is not a tree in sight,—­not a human habitation.  Clouds, black as midnight, lower upon you from the ravines overhead; and the mountain torrent beneath is but a sheet of foam, and sends up an incessant roar.  A sudden turn in the road brings you in sight of a lofty bridge, stepping from cliff to cliff with a single stride.  A fearful cataract howls beneath it, like an evil spirit, and fills the air with mist; and the mountain wind claps its hands and shrieks through the narrow pass, Ha! ha!—­This is the Devil’s Bridge.  It leads the traveller across the fearful chasm, and through a mountain gallery into the broad, green, silent meadow of Andermath.

Even the sunny morning, which followed thisgloomy day, had not chased the desolate impression from the soul of Flemming.  His excitement increased as he lost himself more and more among the mountains; and now, as he lay all alone on the summit of the sunny hill, with only glaciers and snowy peaks about him, his soul, as I have said, was wild with a fierce and painful delight.

A human voice broke his reverie.  He looked, and beheld at a short distance from him, the athletic form of a mountain herdsman, who was approaching the spot where he lay.  He was a young man, clothed in a rustic garb, and holding a long staff in his hand.  When Flemming rose, he stood still, and gazed at him, as if he loved the face of man, even in a stranger, and longed to hear a human voice, though it might speak in an unknown tongue.  He answered Flemming’s salutation in a rude mountain dialect, and in reply to his questions said;

“I, with two others, have charge of two hundred head of cattle on these mountains.  Throughthe two summer months we remain here night and day; for which we receive each a Napoleon.”

Flemming gave him half his summer wages.  He was glad to do a good deed in secret, and yet so near heaven.  The man received it as his due, like a toll-keeper; and soon after departed, leaving the traveller alone.  And the traveller went his way down the mountain, as one distraught.  He stopped only to pluck one bright blue flower, which bloomed all alone in the vast desert, and looked up at him, as if to say; “O take me with you! leave me not here companionless!”