replied Keller earnestly, "and that speedily, too. My helpless and solitary family is in peril, and the very danger of the tempest is an incentive to reach those who know so little how to provide against it, and are perhaps even now in want of my assistance. These unexampled snowdrifts may, before morning, hide my poor little cottage from the sight, and what would Steinmitz be then, when the last of mortal ties on earth had been so fearfully sundered?" As he said this he moved towards the door, and opening it, looked out upon the waste. "It is indeed a wild night, but” a low distant crushing sound came on the blast, and interrupted his discourse. He stood rigid with attention until it passed away." "That is what I most feared," said he, "that awful sound is the death-note of the avalanche. The mighty mass of snow is becoming too heavy for the rocks to detain it longer. I must fly to my family. for to-morrow may be too late. If alive, the morning will bring us back to your hospitable abode, for longer my wife and children must not remain on that dreadful slope. The snow is beginning to break from its fastnesses. The signs are not to be mistaken. The chamois and the steinbocht have forsaken their hiding-places, and the lammergeier‡ are congregating from every quarter of the heavens. They have an unerring instinct in these things. They have heard, before us, the low sounds which the over-burdened mountain utters, as its soil slips, and its projecting rocks bend before the resistless weight of the snow. The vast accessions of the week have hastened the coming woe, and I have already periled my life to get thus far, and I cannot now hesitate to proceed. The Great Being who holds the bills in a balance, can, if it seems good to him, guide me now, as easily as on the brightest day, and I am in the path of duty. If I perish, I have only one favour to ask :-This packet must not be opened until my death is ascertained; it will instruct you whither to send my poor family. that, I ask no more." Girding around him tightly his mountain dress, Keller was about to issue from the gate, when the dog which had first found him in the evening, seized him by the skirts. "Let go, Barré," said the supeRock-goat, ibex, bonquatin, or capra Alpino. I Vulture of the Alps.

• Snow-slip.

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rior. The dog obeyed, but getting in front blocked up the wicket, and, with a low growl debarred his exit. "The very dog opposes your departure, Steinmitz, take his advice. He knows you must perish if you venture abroad tonight. It is not long since he offered resistance to the departure of the poor fellow whom you found dead in the pass to-day!" 'There?" cried Keller, "let me go in the name of God!that awful deep sound comes again on the wind, and warns me to fly." His tone and look put an end to resistance; and even the dog, retreating into the courtyard, stood stiff with attention to the deep voice of the mountain. As Keller passed him he wagged his tail, and looking up into the face of the superior, invited his signal of permission to accompany the traveller. It was given, and pressing close to the side of Keller, he waited for his customary flask and cloak.* They were fixed. "You forget your staff, Steinmitz," said the monk, putting into his hands a long slender pole, armed at one end with a sharpened iron ferrule. "You have need of all help to-night; God bless you in your perilous path of duty. Barré, keep close to him." The dog signified his acquiescence by taking, at a very short distance, the lead; and in this manner the travellers left the hospitable court-yard of St. Bernard. "I can scarcely believe Steinmitz right in his fears," said the superior, "the avalanche descends only in the spring, when the snow is heavy with rain, and when its hold on the rugged soil is loosened by the water which trickles down the hills." "That is usually true," rejoined an old monk, whose life had been spent among the passes, "but the immense mass of snow which now lies above his residence, and the boding signals of the hill, and the flight of the chamois and bouquetin, and the gathering of the lammergeier, are things to significant of danger to have escaped the anxious and instructed notice of our neighbour. God grant we may see him and our poor Barré again; but I feel as if we had taken our last look of them."

While the benevolent fathers sat over the decaying embers, conversing of the traveller, and endeavouring to console themselves by the recollection of the many wonderful and miraculous escapes of those whom winter

Usually fastened to the dogs for the use of travellers.

caught in those wild regions, Keller and his four-footed companion, following the irregular course of the pass, hastened towards that home in which lay all the earthly treasure of the exiled patriot. They were to him kindred, friends, riches, honour, country. He had nothing on earth but what reposed in his air-hung cottage; and the attraction which drew him onward was the whole power and concentration of human motives and affections. The deep meditations of his heart rendered him little observant either of the direction of the road, or of its difficulties. The guide whom he followed had often visited his abode, and to his unerring instinct he implicitly trusted. Sometimes, up to the waist in the fleecy snow-bank, Keller availed himself of the prodigious strength and agility of the dog for an escape otherwise impracticable. In the singularly varied windings of their obscure path, the wind, in a favourable direction, would sometimes have forced the tall, broad figure of the mountaineer too hastily along, but for his pole, and the restraint imposed on the tail of his leathern coat by the teeth of Barré; while often blowing fiercely in opposition, nothing but the friendly drag of his four-footed guide could have enabled Keller to advance. By slow and most laborious progress, they at length reached the end of the narrow pass, and issued out upon the broad platform of the glacier, which, extending for a considerable distance, terminated at the base of the steep acclivity, on which hung the cottage of Keller.

At this place the fathers of St. Bernard had erected a chalet, or hut, in which they left, in perilous seasons, blankets, and refreshments. Keller saw, by the light which hung from the cieling, that it was furnished for the storm; but though hungry and fatigued, he passed it rapidly, and reached the angle of the morgue of the chalet, beyond which he expected to have an unobstructed view of Mont-Mort. There was a light also in the morgue, and the quick eye of Keller observed, that the glass case or cover of the black marble slab in its centre was not unoccupied. The bare possibility of having a near interest in these remains, carried him to the table. It contained the wife and child of the courier of St. Pierre, who had perished, as he had heard, by leaving home to meet the husband and father on

his return from a distant service. The bonds of human sympathy are never drawn so closely as when the links in the chain of misfortune are of the metal of our own destiny. Time could not mark the briefness of the moment in which Keller's mind ran through the terrible parallel, and rushing out from the morgue, he sought the open plain.

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At this point he paused, to look for that light which, in this wild country, never failed to illuminate his window, and which had often led the bewildered traveller or benighted hunter to his shed. For the first time it was absent, and the low piteous moan of the dog assured him that his keener eye failed to discover it. 'Oh, Barré, they are gone!" said the stunned father and husband. "Buried in the leeward snow-drift, they are debarred escape from the avalanche. To their rescue, or to death!" and with impetuous haste and unearthly energy, the tired hunter rushed across the bare surface of the icy plain. Barré kept before him for some time, but at length suddenly paused, and turning round, attempted to obstruct his progress. Dashed impatiently aside, he instantly seized his skirt, and in the effort to detain him, threw him to the ground. The fall recalled Keller to his senses, and he soon perceived by his significant movements that his companion had discovered a new rift in the ice, which, filled by the storm with light drifted snow, would, in a few onward steps, have absorbed him and his hopes and fears for ever. Turning aside to a narrow part of the chasm, Barré, by a few extraordinary and struggling bounds, succeeded in reaching the solid bank beyond. With cautious and probing steps Steinmitz felt its verge, and extending his long pole deeply into its centre, sprang with the agility of the ibex to the other side. But it was a long leap, and the snow clinging to the pole, would have drawn him back from his faithless footing, into its cold abyss. Barré expected this, and stood ready to seize him as he alighted, and with the temporary loss of his pole, Keller was again on his feet. To bring the end of the pole to his hand was but a short struggle for the dog. and again they resumed their journey.

On the afternoon of the day whose dreadful night we are now describing, George Steinmitz, the eldest son of the hunter, came down from the hill. He had nearly reached

its summit by the bed of a stream, which seemed to have its source in the clouds.' "I wish," said he to his mo. ther as he entered the cottage, that our father was here." Old Seiper, our neighbour, is up there, looking at the snow bank, and says that it will come down before to-morrow. I was just going to shoot at a fierce looking lammergeier, when my gun was suddenly and roughly wrested from me by the strong old fellow. Although he appeared angry, he spoke to me almost in a whisper, and told me that one shot would have brought down the snow-bank. I was, as you may suppose, scarcely pleased at his roughness, and was beginning to talk loudly about it, when he very coolly clapt his hand on my mouth, and told me not to shake the air too much. Don't you see,' said he, that that old vulture wants you to shoot. He keeps just out of reach of your gun. I can't help thinking he knows the effect of sound, for just before you came up, he was screaming in a way which, old as I am, I never heard before. That fellow is old enough to have remembered the former avalanche, and may live to scream for many more, rather than that you should shoot at him now.' Mother," continued George, "it is awful to see the snow at the top beginning to sag down on the snow beneath, and force itself up into huge wreaths. Rough as is the hill below, it cannot long resist the pressure. Old Seiper begs you will not lose a moment in setting off to the monastery. He has gone to remove his family."

In compliance with the advice of the experienced hunter and in accordance with the conditional injunction of Keller, so often repeated before his departure, the little family with heavy hearts and tearful eyes, took leave of the hut, which, though rude and inconvenient, had received them when all the world beside had rejected them. When Keller was rich, the cares of the world, the business of life, absorbed his attention, and too often shared in his affection; but there was nothing here to divide the heart which misfortune had only softened; and in the long winter nights, undisturbed by visitors, and unoccupied by business, he gave himself up to his family. Sage counsel, affectionate pleasantry, agreeable narrative, gave wings to time, and the wife, a true woman, forgot, on the throne of her domestic felicity, even the cherished vanities and the showy pageantry L 35. 1.

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