"Then there can have been no plunge down a precipice; two persons, and two horses, could not disappear from a tolerably safe road without a trace left behind. They have lost their way." "But that is impossible,--there is no other road," said the priest. "Yes, one, your reverence, near Almenbach, where the path winds upward to the mountain chapel. The roads are very similar, moonlight is illusive, and if the Countess did not soon find out her mistake, she must have got among the clefts of the Eagle ridge!" "God protect us!" exclaimed the priest. "That would be almost as bad as a plunge down a precipice!" Michael bit his lip; he knew that this was no exaggeration; from his boyhood he had been familiar with the clefts and abysses of the Eagle ridge. "It is the only imaginable possibility," he rejoined. "At all events, there is not a moment to be wasted; hours have been lost already. We must set out immediately." "Now? In such a night?" asked Wolfram, staring at the captain as if he thought him insane, while Valentin exclaimed,-- "What are you thinking of, Michael? You do not mean----?" "To go in search of the Countess. Of course. Do you suppose I could stay quietly here while she is exposed to all the horrors of this night?" "You ought to wait, and not attempt impossibilities. You know our mountains, and that nothing is to be done while the storm is raging thus. As soon as it subsides, as soon as the morning dawns, we will do all that men can do. To go out now would be worse than folly,--it would be madness!" "Madness or not, it must be attempted!" Michael burst forth. "Do you imagine that I set the least value on my life weighed against hers? If I had to follow her to the summit of the Eagle ridge, where death seemed certain, I would either deliver her from peril or perish with her!" Valentin clasped his hands in dismay. This burst of despair and anguish betrayed to him the well-guarded secret of which he had, indeed, within the last few minutes had some suspicion, and he exclaimed under his breath, "Can this be? Good God!" Michael paid him no heed; he had turned to Wolfram, and said, hastily, "I need companions; we must search in different directions; will you go with me?" "I? Now, when all the fiends of hell are loose in the mountains? The Wild Huntsman was never so furious in all the years I spent at the forest lodge." "Infernal superstition!" muttered Rodenberg, stamping his foot. "Then go for the innkeeper; he is a good mountaineer and a brave man." "That may be, but he'll not stir out in weather like this. He took his oath of that when some one spoke of it awhile ago, and he said a ton of gold would not tempt him, for he had a wife and children to take care of."