Thus the summer passed away, and winter fell upon the valleys, and soon Wally must descend with its wild forerunners, the storm and the snow, to her estranged home. She quailed at the thought. Rather would she have crept up here into some deepest ice-cave with suspended existence like the wild bear than go down again to the noise and smoke of the low spinning-room, and be wedged, together with her morose father, her detested suitor, and the malicious servants, within the narrow compass of the house, imprisoned behind walls of snow a foot high, out of which, often for weeks at a time, no escape was possible. The nearer the time came, the heavier her heart grew, the more despondingly did she revolt against the thought of that imprisonment; but time passed on, and no one came to fetch her; it seemed as though down there she was entirely forgotten. Colder ever and more wintry grew the weather, the days ever shorter, the nights ever longer; two sheep perished in a snow-storm; soon the animals could find no more food, and the time for fetching home the flocks was gone and past. "They mean to leave us to die up here of hunger," said Wally to the vulture, as she divided her last piece of cheese with him, and a secret horror swept over her; the young healthy life rebelled within her against the terrible thought. What should she do? Forsake the flock and find the homeward track, leaving the innocent beasts to perish miserably? Nay!--that Wally would not do--she would stand or fall like a brave commander with his troops. Or should she set out together with the flocks, all ignorant of the road as she was, and wander over the snow-covered Ferner to see at last one animal after another sink amid the ice and snow, or fall into the clefts of the rock? This also was impossible; she could do nothing but wait. At last, one misty autumn morning when she could not see her hand before her face for the fog, when the little flock, trembling with frost, were all huddled together in their fold, and Wally, stiff with cold, sat over the fire on the hearth--then the boy appeared to conduct her home. And though she had shrunk with horror from the thought of slowly starving up here with her flock, yet now all her former dread of the return home came upon her again, and she knew not which seemed the greater evil--to sink here by the side of her harsh father Murzoll, or to be obliged to go back to her real father. The herd-boy broke the silence: "Thy father bids me tell thee thou's not to come into his sight unless thou'll do as he bids thee; but, if thou'll not hear reason, then thou may stay with the cow-herd in the stable--into the house thou shall not come; that he's sworn." "So much the better," said Wally, drawing a deep breath, and the boy stared at her in astonishment.