They went higher and higher towards the snow mountains. The moss spread itself softly over the stones; the Alpine herbs, with their velvety leaves, grew along the pathway; the mountain, with its rifts and precipices, its glaciers and snow-drifts, towered above them, weighing them down. Then the monk discovered old Agnete's hut, right below the glacier. 'Oh,' he said, 'is it there you live? Then you are not alone there; you have company enough. Only look!' The monk put his thumb and first finger together, held them before old Agnete's left eye, and bade her look through them towards the mountain. But old Agnete shuddered and closed her eyes. 'If there is anything to see up there, then I will not look on any account,' she said. 'The Lord preserve us! it is bad enough without that.' 'Good-bye, then,' said the monk; 'it is not certain that you will be permitted to see such a thing a second time.' Old Agnete grew curious; she opened her eyes and looked towards the glacier. At first she saw nothing remarkable, but soon she began to discern things moving about. What she had taken to be mist and vapour, or bluish-white shadows on the ice, were multitudes of doomed souls, tormented in the eternal cold. Poor old Agnete trembled like an aspen leaf. Everything was just as she had heard it described in days gone by. The dead wandered about there in endless anguish and pain. Most of them were shrouded in something long and white, but all had their faces and their hands bared. They could not be counted, there was such a multitude. The longer she looked, the more there appeared. Some walked proud and erect, others seemed to dance over the glacier; but she saw that they all cut their feet on the sharp and jagged edges of the ice. It was just as she had been told. She saw how they constantly huddled close together, as if to warm themselves, but immediately drew back again, terrified by the deathly cold which emanated from their bodies. It was as if the cold of the mountain came from them, as if it were they who prevented the snow from melting and made the mist so piercingly cold. They were not all moving; some stood in icy stoniness, and it looked as if they had been standing thus for years, for ice and snow had gathered around them so that only the upper portion of their bodies could be seen. The longer the little old woman gazed the quieter she grew. Fear left her, and she was only filled with sorrow for all these tormented beings. There was no abatement in their pain, no rest for their torn feet, hurrying over ice sharp as edged steel. And how cold they were! how they shivered! how their teeth chattered from cold! Those who were petrified and those who could move, all suffered alike from the snarling, biting, unbearable cold. There were many young men and women; but there was no youth in their faces, blue with cold. It looked as if they were playing, but all joy was dead. They shivered, and were huddled up like old people.