From a rock, whose height made their heads giddy, they had ventured at mid-day to cast their eyes down into the regions beneath them, and which the sinking heart of Ida now made her despair of ever reaching. They could perceive from hence several dark spots, which Ida pronounced to be abysses, in which their path would at length terminate: and this decision she delivered with such positiveness, that Constantia would undoubtedly have consented to return, or else have chosen a different path, had either a return been now practicable, or another path been to be found. But as the day advanced, and the road still continued to sink itself lower and lower, with what rapture did they ascertain, that these supposed abysses in fact were parts of a village; whose smoking chimnies announced to them the neighbourhood of domestic comforts, and to whose peaceable shelter the cattle were at that moment returning from pasture. The quick-sighted Ida was the first to make this discovery. She sank weeping upon the bosom of her sister, and entreated her to forgive the wayward humour, with which she had embittered their journey. Constantia folded the suppliant to her heart, and the Sisters united in offering up a prayer of fervent gratitude to the Saint, who had guided their wanderings so wonderfully and so well. They resumed their journey, and now how easy did it seem to them! As they descended, the path gradually enlarged itself; and before the shutting in of night they found themselves safe under one of the cottage-roofs, where they learned for the first time after a long, long interval, what it was to rest without anxiety: in truth the short and broken slumbers, which visited them in the robber-valley, were scarcely worthy of being called by the sweet name of rest. While the Damsels of Werdenberg were engaged in the above adventures; while one of them was anxiously and vainly expected at the Convent of Zurich, and while the other was most unjustly censured and despised for her supposed elopement with the acknowledged bridegroom of her friend; Count Henry of Montfort was eagerly pursuing the wrong track, into which he had been enticed by the perfidious chaplain of Castle-March. Persuaded that he should soon overtake Ida, he continued to rush forwards without allowing himself to rest for a moment; till in a little village belonging to the Canton of Glarus he was attacked by a severe fever, produced by the violence of his mental agitation, and by the inconsiderate speed, with which his journey had been performed. Nature at length yielded, and Henry was compelled to stop, and make his option either of recovering slowly, or of dying at once.