How intense was that silence!--broken only by the harsh rattle of the torrent and the occasional faint tinkle of a cow-bell in the distance, or now and then by a spirit-like whispering sigh amongst the pines, that scarcely moved their long arms before the cold breath of the dying night. I had finished my toilet, and was just beginning to hug myself in the idea that I had escaped, and had a very good excuse to slip into bed again, when I heard the clang of a pair of iron-soled shoes advancing down the torrent bed that did duty for a road, and to my unmitigated disgust saw Joseph looming through the darkness, like an own brother to the Erl King, a "shooting-iron" under each arm, and a mighty wallet on his back. There was no escape--I was in for it! Setting our faces to the mountains, we entered the pine-forest, and toiled up and up through the dark, silent trees, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, till the day began to break, some three-quarters of an hour after our start, when we stopped with one accord, _of course_ only to look back and see the sunrise, though I doubt if either of us could have kept up that steady tread-mill pace much longer, with any degree of comfort. Well, we halted to look, perhaps for the last time, at the valley and the village now far below us. We had got to the height of the cliffs on the opposite side, and could look over their summits at the tumbled alp-billows that tossed their white crests for many a league beyond; the sun steeping the snow-peaks in tints of purple, pink, and crimson, and here and there a rock-peak shone with the brightest silver and the reddest gold,--enough to send one "clean wud" with their exquisite beauty. Down below in the valley, the sun had not yet risen, though man had; the little columns of blue smoke wreathed gracefully upwards in the calm morning air, and the lowing of the cows, and the faint tinkle of their bells, as they were being driven to their morning pasture, floated up ever and anon in strangely diminished tones, that seemed to come from some fairy world far down in the Alp-caverns. Having rested, we turned our faces again to the mountains, and toiled anew through the pine-forest, now no longer dark and gloomy, but fleckered with gleams of yellow morning light, and sparkling with a thousand dew-diamonds.