The howling of the wind and the occasional thunder of the avalanche from some neighbouring mountain lent a kind of terror to the scene, which I should have enjoyed, had I been in a more comfortable frame of mind. But, with the gnawing pains of hunger and the horrible feeling of doubt as to whether I should ever meet with any traces of civilisation where I might recruit my wasted energies, the beauty of the spot was shut from me, and I found it only a cold, damp, disagreeable retreat. It was yet early in the night when I took up my quarters here, but it was dark and cloudy, and I put up at this place, despairing of finding a more hospitable lodging, on account of the darkness, besides which I was tired out. I had reposed in my uncomfortable quarters for, it might be, two or three hours, though without sleeping, when the clouds began to disperse and the sky was calm and serene, the moon bright and clear, so I thought I would leave my camping place and venture a little further, in the vague hope of finding some hospitable chalet where I might obtain fire and food. I was now considerably rested from my fatigue, but the pangs of hunger grew ever more intense. I wandered on and on, till the pines grew less thick, and a wide extended view opened before me, when I fancied that I descried afar off in the valley a light. My heart began to revive. As I strode onward I saw below me a small lake, over which frowned dark toppling crags. The moon shone brightly over all. Still keeping the distant chalet in sight, I could think of little else than the meal which would await me on my arrival; but while glancing casually over the lake illumined by the moonbeams, and the cliff that overhung it, my eye was suddenly arrested by an object, apparently a human being, clambering up a height that I should have imagined inaccessible to any mortal man. It literally overhung the lake. At first I thought my eyes deceived me, but as I looked I was more and more convinced that it was a human being performing this feat. I had heard much of the daring of the Swiss mountaineers, but this beat anything I ever heard of, for the cliff, besides over-hanging, was comparatively smooth, being of slate, and there appeared nothing to hold on by. "Could it really be a human being?" I asked myself. If so, it was so hideously misshapen as hardly to deserve the title. In spite of my hunger, I panted awhile in breathless anxiety to observe the course of this creature. "Surely some madman," thought I, "tired of his life." Every moment I expected to see his foot slip and to hear a splash in the lake below; but no, the being, whatever it was, crawled steadily upwards like a huge spider, till it gained the summit of the cliff. I then lost sight of it. A few steps further on led me to the spot the climber had reached, when soon among the lengthened shadows of the pines, I descried a shadow which was not that of a tree.