Above, all was snow. In those northward valleys winter loiters late, and spring comes but tardily. Once among the _firn_, Franz could give them the slip, he felt sure; he could lurk behind rocks, or hide among the klamms, and let the baffled pursuers pass by unnoticing. But no—but no—ach, Gott! the footprints! With a sudden revulsion he realised his error. Those years in milder climates had made him forget for a moment the hopelessness of escaping if once he reached the snow-line. Appalled and dismayed, he turned and hesitated. Then he dashed off at an angle, horizontally along the hill, at the same general level, so as to avoid the snow-covered glaciers. That one false move lost him. His pursuers, seeing him double, headed forward diagonally across the third side of the triangle, and gained on him visibly. Franz was blown and panting. His heart throbbed hard; he had overtaxed it sadly in that first wild burst up the ramping hillside. Again he paused, and looked back. The hopelessness and futility of the whole thing broke in upon him. If he ran all day and all night as well—if he distanced that little body of amateur pursuers for the moment—what would it profit him in the end? Could he evade arrest at last? could he escape the clutches of the Austrian law, shake off the strong hand of the Kaiserlich-Königlich government? All at once, seized with a sudden little access of despair, he sat down on the hillside, and laughed aloud audibly. “Ha, ha, ha,” he cried, hoarsely, at the very top of his voice, as his antagonists drew nearer, “So you think you’ll catch me! You think you’ll get well paid! You want to earn a reward on me! Well, look here, Ludwig Dangl,” and he shouted through his bent hand to the foremost of his pursuers, “there’s ten thousand florins set on my head already for stabbing a man dead in an hotel at Monte Carlo—and it’s yours . . . if you catch me! Come on, friend, and earn it!” He had grown reckless now. The dare-devil spirit of the man who knows well he has forfeited his life and has no chance of escape left, had wholly taken hold of him. He sat there, by the Kamin, waiting till the pursuers were almost upon him. “Ten thousand florins!” he shouted aloud once more, waving his hat above his head, as he jumped up when they neared him. “Ten thousand florins is a nice round sum! Will you have it, Ludwig Dangl? will you have it, Karl Furst? will you have it, Fritz Mairhofer?”