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On the clear, transparent ground sat the Ice Maiden. She raised herself towards Rudy, and kissed his feet; and instantly a cold, deathly chill, like an electric shock, passed through his limbs. Ice or fire! It was impossible to tell, the shock was so instantaneous. "Mine! mine!" sounded around him, and within him; "I kissed thee when thou wert a little child.
They departed early in the morning; the sun showed Rudy new mountains, new glaciers and snow-fields; they had now reached Canton Valais and the other side of the mountain ridge which was visible at Grindelwald, but they were still far from the new home.
"He kissed me whilst dancing!" said the schoolmaster's Annette to her most intimate friend, but she should not have said this, not even to her dearest friend, but it is difficult to keep such things to one's self like sand in a purse with a hole in it, it soon runs out and although Rudy was so steady and good it was soon known that he kissed whilst dancing.
Rudy recounted to him his hunting expeditions; described the difficulties, the dangers and the privations of the chamois hunter when on the lofty mountain peak; how often he must climb over the insecure snow-ledges, that the wind had blown on the rocky brink, and how he must pass over slight bridges that the snow-drifts had thrown across the abyss.
Rudy lay cast on the earth; the trunk of the tree on which he had held was as though sawed off, and its crown was hurled still farther along. His uncle lay amongst the broken branches, with his head shattered; his hands were yet warm, but his face was no longer to be recognized. Rudy stood pale and trembling; this was the first terror of his life, the first hour of fear that he had ever known.
Rudy, as usual, had plenty of courage, and indulged in pleasant thoughts of the favorable answer he should receive that evening. And when the omnibus returned, Rudy was again seated in it, going homewards; and at the same time the parlor-cat at the miller's house ran out quickly, crying, "Here, you from the kitchen, what do you think? The miller knows all now.
"In the deep water!" she said to herself; "far down he lies, as if beneath a glacier." Deep in her heart rested the memory of what Rudy had told her of the death of his mother, and of his own recovery, even after he had been taken up as dead from the cleft in the glacier. "Ah," she thought, "the Ice Maiden has him at last."
They were misshapen, wretched-looking creatures, with yellow complexions; and on their necks were dark, ugly lumps of flesh, hanging down like bags. They were called cretins. They dragged themselves along painfully, and stared at the strangers with vacant eyes. The women looked more dreadful than the men. Poor Rudy! were these the sort of people he should see at his new home?
"The eagle could not be taken; it would be folly to attempt it." The wine was passed round freely, and the conversation kept up pleasantly; but the evening seemed too short for Rudy, although it was midnight when he left the miller's house, after this his first visit.
Ned's hand trembled as he kept the boat in position, and Clay and Nugget exchanged frightened glances. "I knew it," cried Daddy Perkiss in a cracked voice. "That lad will never be seen again. He's gone down to meet Jonas Rudy." This ill boding prophecy had scarcely left the old man's lips, when Randy shot into view a few feet to the left of where he had disappeared.
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