And then I’ve often noticed that the blue color keeps on below the ice,—probably stones, I’ve thought, or maybe ploughed ground and pastures, and then come the pine woods that go down and down, and all kinds of rocks in between, then the green meadows, then the woods with leaves, and then our own meadows and fields in the valley of Gschaid. Now you see, Sanna, we are at the ice and from here we will go down over the blue color and through the woods where the rocks are, then over the meadows and then through the woods with the leaves, and then we shall be in the valley of Gschaid and then it will be easy to find our village.”

“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.

The children went on into the ice wherever they could find a place to step.

They were just tiny moving dots among the formidable masses.

As they peered in beneath the projecting slabs, almost as if instinct were impelling them to seek shelter, they walked along in a broad deeply-scored channel that led straight out of the ice, like the bed of a stream, dried up now and covered with new-fallen snow. Where it emerged it was vaulted over with ice, beautifully arched like a canopy. Following the channel, they went in—deeper and deeper. It was entirely dry, and they had smooth ice to walk on. But the whole cavern was blue, bluer than anything on earth, a blue deeper and finer than the vault of heaven itself, blue as azure glass with a faint light inside. There were massive ribs overhead, and more delicate ones, with pendant icicles, point lace, and tassels, the way leading further still—they knew not how far but they did not go on. It might even have been pleasant in the cave, it was warm, no snow was falling; but it was so fearsome a blue the children were frightened and ran out again. They walked on a while in the hollowed bed of the stream and then climbed up over the side.

They kept along the edge of the ice as far as they could thread through the detritus and creep between the great slabs.

“We have to get up over this and then we can run down, away from the ice,” said Conrad.

“Yes,” said Sanna, and clung tight to him.

They now struck a downward course through the snow, one that was to lead them into the valley. But they did not get far. Another river of ice, heaved up in a pile like a gigantic barricade, lay across the soft snow and seemed almost to be reaching out arms to the left and the right. Under the blanket of white that hid it there were greenish, bluish, leaden, black, even yellow and reddish glimmers from the sides.

They now had a better perspective since the unprecedented unwearying snow was thinning and flakes were coming down only as on ordinary snowy days. With the fortitude of ignorance they clambered up on the ice to cross the protruding tongue of the glacier and then descend on the farther side. They crept through slits, planted their feet on any snow-capped projection whether rock or ice, helped with their hands, crawled where they could not walk, their light bodies working on up until they had scaled the inside of the barrier and were on top.

They had intended to climb down the other side.

There was no other side.

As far as the eye could reach there was only ice. Pointed masses and irregular clumps thrusting up from the fearsome snow-encrusted ice. Instead of a barricade that could be surmounted, with snow beyond, as they had expected, yet other walls of ice rose from the buttress, cracked and fissured, with innumerable meandering blue veins, and beyond these walls, others like them; and beyond, others, until the falling snow blurred the distance in its veil of gray.

“Sanna, we cannot go over there,” said the lad.

“No,” said the little one.

“We shall just turn around and get down somewhere else.”

“Yes, Conrad.”

The children then tried to climb down at the place where they had clambered up, but were not able. There was nothing but ice, as if they had missed the direction from which they had come up. They turned this way and that and could not get away from the ice; it was as if they were clasped in it. They worked down and came to more ice. Finally when the lad went as he thought always in the direction from which they had come, they came to other deformed fragments but larger and more intimidating for the most part than along the ice-margin, and by crawling and clambering, they managed to get out. At the edge of the moraine were gigantic boulders heaped up in a way the two children had never seen in all their lives. Many were shrouded in white; others on the under sides or where they slanted up had a smooth high-polished surface as if they had been shoved forward on it; some were tilted together like houses or the sides of a roof; some lay one upon the other like misshapen clods. Not far from the children, several were slanted together, and lying on them were great wide slabs like a roof. A little house had thus been formed, open at the front but closed at both sides and the back. It was dry inside since the snow had been falling straight down and not a flake had drifted in.

The children were thankful not to be in the midst of ice any longer but to be standing on solid ground again.

By this time it had grown very dark.

“Sanna,” said the lad, “we cannot go down any farther because it’s night, and we might fall, or even stumble into a crevasse. Let’s go in under the stones where it’s so dry and warm, and wait there. The sun will come up again and then we’ll run down the mountain. Don’t cry, please don’t cry, you can have all the things to eat that Grandmother gave us to bring along.”

She did not cry. But when they had both gone in under the projecting stone roof where there was even room to sit, stand or walk about, she sat down close to him and was still as a mouse.

“Mother is not going to be displeased with us,” said Conrad. “We shall tell her all about the heavy snow that has kept us and she won’t say anything; neither will Father.