those which made their voice heard among the cliffs. It seemed not only possible, but probable, that some great special Intelligence reigned over the giant forces which stirred around me. The old legends of ice-gods took shadow and form. I strode on to the little shelter-place, which lies under the Jungfrau, with the fearful step of one encroaching upon the domain of some august and splendid monarch. I did not once seek to combat the imaginative humors which lent a tone and a consistency to this feeling. I would not, if I could, have resisted the weird impressions of the place.
A terrific storm burst over the mountains, shortly after I had gained shelter in the little châlet of the Ober-Alp. The only company I found was the host, and a flax-haired German student. This last abandoned his pipe as the storm rose, and listened with me silently, and, I thought, with the same measure of awe, to the crash of the avalanches which were loosened by the falling torrents of rain.
"The Ice-King is angry to-night," said our host.
I could not smile at the superstition of the man; a sense of awe was too strong upon me; there was a feeling born of the mountain presence, and of the terrific crash of the glaciers, which forbade my smiling—a feeling as if an Ice-King might be really there to avenge a slight.
Presently there was a louder shock than usual, and the echoes of the report thundered for several minutes among the cliffs. The mountain host went to the door, which looked out toward the Jungfrau; and soon he called us hurriedly to see, as he called it, the Maid of the Glacier.
The bald wall of rock we could see looming dark through the tempest, and the immense caps of glacier, which lay at the top. The host directed our attention to a white speck half-way up the face of the precipice which appeared to rise slowly in a wavy line, and presently to disappear over the edge of the glacier.
"You saw her?" said the host excitedly; "you never see her, except after some terrible avalanche."
"What is it?" said I.
"We call her the Bride of the Ice-King," said our host; and he appealed to the German student, who, I found, had been frequently in
