Many a time her father had spoken of the daring deeds of Conrad, and had told to Clothilde, with an old man's ardor, the tale of the wild mountain-hunts which Conrad could reckon up; and how, once upon a time, when a child was lost, they had lowered the young huntsman with ropes into the deep crevasses of the glacier; and how, in the depths of the icy cavern, he had bound the young child to his shoulder, and been dragged, bruised and half-dead, to the light again.
To all this Clothilde had listened with a sparkle in her eye; yet she felt not her heart warming toward Conrad, as the heart of a maiden should warm toward an accepted lover.
Many and many a time Conrad had gazed on Clothilde as she kneeled in the village church. Many and many a time he had watched her crimson kirtle, as she disappeared among the walnut-trees that grew by her father's door. Many and many a time he had looked longingly upon the ten dun cows which made up her father's flock, and upon the green pasturage ground, where his kids counted by fifty.
Brave enough he was to climb the crags, even when the ice was smooth on the narrow foot-way, and a slip would hurl him to destruction; he had no fear of the crevasses which gape frightfully on the paths that lead over the glaciers; he did not shudder at the thunders which the avalanches sent howling among the heights around him; and yet Conrad had never dared to approach, as a lover might approach, the pensive-eyed Clothilde.
With other maidens of the village he danced anu sang, even as the other young herdsmen, who were his mates in the village games, danced and sang. Once or twice, indeed, he had borne a gift—a hunter's gift of tender chamois-flesh—to the old man, her father. And Clothilde, with her own low voice, had said, "My father thanks you, Conrad."
And the brave hunter, in her presence, was like a sparrow within the swoop of a falcon!
If she sang, he listened—as though he dreamed that leaves were fluttering, and birds were singing over him. If she was silent, he gazed on her—as he had gazed on cool mountain-pools when the sun smote fiercely.
