He pressed on over a barren road which has been likened to a waterless lake in the hollow of the mountains. The snow lay heavy and the walking was difficult. By here and there he passed wayfarers coming down from the Hospice, but telling ever the same story of hardship and distress. When, at length, he espied the monastery buildings, it was at a moment when an avalanche crashed down on the road before him, and its thunders echoed in the heights with the booming of a thousand cannon. Such appalling sounds affrighted him beyond all reason, for he knew little of Switzerland in the winter, save what Andana had taught him. Grimly and with satisfaction, he remembered how little all this terror of the hills had meant to him last night, and how little it would mean to the men of to-morrow. Give him his ship, and he would be but a speck above these imprisoning peaks—as free as an eagle, and as kingly. To go as he must go—battling with the snow and often almost conquered by it, was a humiliation his genius derided. But it was in keeping with the truth of the quest; and presently, when a second avalanche thundered down, and the snow sprayed above a gallery as foam upon a seashore, he shuddered at its reality and wondered if his courage were equal to the ordeal. He was but a quarter of a mile from the gate of the Hospice by this time, and he perceived that those who had gone before him here deserted the pass itself and went downward a little way toward the abyss. So many feet had trodden out a path that prudence bade him take it. Striking out boldly, he found himself presently in a magic sea whose billows rose above his head but never engulfed him. At this time the monastery disappeared from his view entirely; the landmarks by which he might have guided himself to its doors vanished to give place to this monstrous and unbroken curtain of the snow. He had the sense of being lost beyond hope, of being a man adrift upon an ocean whose waters were white with an icy foam. All idea of direction was blotted out immediately in this blinding waste. He found the path and lost it ten times in as many minutes, and then fell to bitter self-reproach because he had deserted the high road. Vain lament—that desertion was his salvation! A great dog came battling through the snow, and, anon, a monk with a cassock tucked up to his waist, and skis upon his feet. He was quite a youth, and he laughed and nodded to the stranger as one who would say: "All is well; we knew you were coming to us." At his direction Benny turned up the hillside again, and there he found the rope by which travellers pull themselves up to the gates of the Hospice. They were now but fifty yards from its door, and he could hear a bell calling the priests to terce. The monk, in his turn, pointed to the high road, and to the mountains of snow which rested upon its galleries.