192 THE LOST JAGER. 



he could give but lisping and broken utterance. He prayed with an 

 artless and fervent eloquence, he committed himself and his spirit to the 

 hands of his God, to whose presence he seemed more nearly to ap- 

 proach in his isolation from the world. He prayed, in words such as 

 his tongue had never before uttered, and with feelings such as, till that 

 period, his heart had never known. 



The storm became gradually exhausted in its violence. The thunder 

 grew faint, and the gusts came at longer intervals. As the immediate 

 peril decreased, Fritz, whose senses, from the stimulus of danger, had 

 hitherto borne up against the intense cold and his previous fatigue, 

 began to feel creeping upon him, along with a disinclination to move, a 

 wild confusion of thought, such as one feels when sleep is struggling 

 with pain. There was a dim sense of peril a thought of falling rocks 

 arid cracking glaciers and sometimes there was a distant screaming of 

 discordant voices and sometimes they seemed to mumble uncouth and 

 harsh sounds into his ear and then again would he rally back his recol- 

 lection, and even find in his known peril a relief from the undefined and 

 ghastly horrors of his wandering thoughts. But his trance at every 

 relapse became deeper and deeper, and his returns of recollection were 

 more and more partial. He had still enough to make an attempt at 

 shaking off the numbing drowsiness which was creeping upon him, and 

 twining round his heart with the slow and noiseless coil of a serpent. He 

 endeavoured to struggle, but every limb was palsied. He seemed to 

 himself to make the efforts of the wildest desperation to raise himself 

 up ; but no member moved. A gush of icy coldness passed through 

 every vein, and he felt no more. 



During that night there was no little bustle in Grindlewald. Poor, 

 poor Netty. The storm had come down with a sudden violence, which 

 completely baffled the skill of the most sagacious storm-seers in the 

 valley; and even Herr Kriiger himself even Herr Kriiger, Old Long 

 Shot, as they used to call him had been taken by surprise. He was 

 sitting opposite me, with the full red light of the wood fire in the 

 kitchen of mine host of the Three Kings beaming on his wrinkled brow, 

 and thin grey locks, which were twisted and staring in every imagina- 

 ble direction, as if they had got a set in a whirlwind. The huge bowl 

 of his meerschaum, was glowing and reeking, and the smoke was playing 

 all sorts of antics ; sometimes popping out at one side of his mouth, 

 sometimes at the other, in a succession of rapid and jerking puffs, whose 

 frequency soon ran up a sum total of a cloud, which enveloped his head 

 like a napkin. He had just given me the history of the said pipe, and 



of its presentation to him by the Baron von , who, by his assistance 



and direction, had succeeded in bringing down a gemsbock. The 

 motto, Wein und Liebe, was still visible on its tarnished circlet of silver, 

 and the old man pointed out its beauties with a rapture, not inferior, 

 perhaps, to that of the connoisseur, who falls into extacies over some 

 bright sunspot on the canvas of Rembrandt. As the low moaning which 

 preceeded the storm, caught his ear, he drew in the fragrance of the 

 bright Turkish with which I had just replenished his pipe, and, as he 

 emitted the fumes in a slow cautious stream, turned inquisitively towards 

 the range of casements which ran along one side of the neat wainscotted 

 apartment. He was apparently satisfied, and turned again to the fire. 

 But the growl of the thunder the instant after came down the valley, 

 and disembarrassing himself of his mouthful, with a haste which almost 



