They said not a word. The
girl followed in the footsteps of the boy. The place where they had
meant to cross grew ever broader, it seemed. Giving up their direction,
they began, to retreat. Where they could not walk they broke with their
hands through the masses of snow which often gave way before their eyes,
revealing the intense blue of a crevasse where all had been pure white
before. But they did not mind this and labored on until they again
emerged from the ice somewhere.
"Sanna," said the boy, "we shall not go into the ice again at all,
because we cannot make our way in it. And because we cannot look down
into our valley, anyway, we want to go down from the mountain in a
straight line. We must come into some valley, and there we shall tell
people that we are from Gschaid and they will show us the way home."
"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.
So they began to descend on the snow in the direction which its slope
offered them. The boy led the little girl by her hand. However, after
having descended some distance, the slope no longer followed that
direction and the snowfield rose again. The children, therefore, changed
their direction and descended toward a shallow basin. But there they
struck ice again. So they climbed up along the side of the basin in
order to seek a way down in some other direction. A slope led them
downward, but that gradually became so steep that they could scarcely
keep a footing and feared lest they should slide down.
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