1 66 The Brothers of Qdschenen. 



the Gallenstock, hound by some horrible fascination to the spot. The 

 Gletscher is changed. It has split and riven as it crept into the val- 

 ley. The bones of him whom I loved so well and whom I murdered 

 are deep in its cold mass ; but / was the same ; wrung by the same 

 torture, and burning with the same reckless passion aye still ! Talk 

 to me of repentance ! I cannot repent. When time had effaced hit 

 image and 1 led her from the altar, mine, I thought the purchase 

 cheap at the cost of my doomed soul. For five-and-fifty years hav 

 I been reaping my reward, for five-and-fifty years enjoyed what wa 

 purchased by my sin. If the pains of hell in this world can procure 

 their remission in the next, tell me of the consolations of your religion, 

 and I will listen. But repent ! I cannot I cannot. Repent ! With 

 every failing throb of this old heart I feel that, were it to do now, 

 friar, I would do it again ! ' 



" I shuddered, and was silent. 



" ' Hush ! ' he resumed * What is that ? Some one is there. Go, 

 go,' he added, pointing wildly to the door. 



" I did, in fact, hear in the kitchen, towards which he directed my 

 attention, the voice as of many feet, and the murmuring of many 

 voices. On entering it a group of men was gathered round some- 

 thing stretched out on the long table beside the range of low case- 

 ments that filled that side of the apartment, and through which the 

 ruddy sunset was streaming into the room. The group opened as I 

 approached ; and before me lay the body of a man clothed in the re- 

 mains of a hunting dress, such as is usually worn by the better class 

 among the peasantry. It had a strange appearance. The face was 

 shrunk and hollow ; the skin, yellow and parchment-like, drawn 

 tightly over the prominent cheek-bones, and the lips had shrunk so 

 as to leave uncovered a row of white and even teeth, that glistened 

 through a long moustache. His hair lay thick and dark upon his 

 shoulders, and even through the horrid disguise of death I could trace 

 the outline of a young and handsome form on whom a maiden's eye 

 might once have been well pleased to look. My heart throbbed au- 

 dibly, as I gazed inquiringly round the group. 



" ' Why,' replied one of the party (a young man in a hunter's 

 dress, with his rifle slung over his shoulder, and a laughing reckless 

 blue eye), * cousin Heinrich and I found him down the Rhone Glets- 

 cher, with the skirt of his jacket peeping out of one of the frozen 

 ridges. I thought it was my poor Theodor Baumgarten, who went out 

 with me last winter and parted company at the Furka, but it is'n't he ; 

 nor Friedrich Stoss, who forgot to come home about six years ago. 

 His jacket looks deucedly old, and it is some time, I think, since he 

 had a shot at the gemsen, though he was all ready for them with the 

 stump of his old rifle. However, there he is ! I thought it more 

 Christian-like he should sleep out his sleep in the church-yard of 

 Goschenen there are but few j age rs have the luck.' 



" * Stoss ! Baumgarten !' slowly muttered an old man whom I had 

 not before noticed, and who, gazing at the face of the dead, seemed 

 trying to unravel the skein of some tangled recollection. He was an 

 old chamois-hunter. His cheek was marked by deep furrows ; his 

 thin white hair twisted in wild elflocks, and his grey eye had that 



