Hence it was with confidence that I awaited the spring. Daily I scanned the mountains after the first sign of a thaw in the streams; I noted how streaks and furrows gradually appeared in the white of the higher slopes; how the gray rocky flanks began to protrude, first almost imperceptibly, then more boldly, as though casting off an unwelcome garb, until great mottled patches stood unbared to the sunlight. Toward the middle of March there came a week of unseasonably warm days, when the sun shone from a cloudless sky and a new softness was in the air. And then, when half the winter apparel of the peaks was disappearing as at a magic touch and the streams ran full to the brim and the lake overflowed, I decided to pay my long-postponed visit to Yulada. Almost exultantly I set forth early one morning. The first stages of the climb could hardly have been easier; it was as though nature had prepared the way. The air was clear and stimulating, yet not too cool; and the comparative warmth had melted the last ice from the lower rocks. Exhilarated by the exercise, I mounted rapidly over slopes that would once have been a formidable barrier. Still Yulada loomed afar, with firm impassive face as always; but I no longer feared her, for surely, I thought, I should this day touch her with my own hands! As I strode up and up in the sunlight, I smiled to remember my old superstitions--what was Yulada after all but a rock, curiously shaped perhaps, but no more terrifying than any other rock! Even when I had passed the timber-line, and strode around the blue-white glaciers at the brink of bare ravines, I still felt an unwonted bravado. Yulada was drawing nearer, noticeably nearer, her features clear-cut on the peak--and how could she resist my coming? In my self-confidence, I almost laughed aloud, almost laughed out a challenge to that mysterious figure, for certainly the few intervening miles could not halt me! So, at least, I thought. But Yulada, if she were capable of thinking, must have held otherwise. Even had she been endowed with reason and with omnipotence, she could hardly have made a more terrible answer to my challenge. I was still plodding up the long, steep grades, still congratulating myself upon approaching success, when I began to notice a change in the atmosphere. It was not only that the air was growing sharper and colder, for that I had expected; it was that a wind was rising from the northwest, blowing over me with a wintry violence. In alarm, I glanced back--a stone-gray mass of clouds was sweeping over the northern mountains, already casting a shadow across the valley, and threatening to enwrap the entire heavens.