reward which my father has promised to the bravest, for a year and a day."
"You ask what is hard," said Conrad. "When the chamois is near, I draw my bow; and when my arrow is on the string, how can I stay the shaft?"
"It is well for your mountain prizes, Conrad; but bethink you the heart of a virgin is to be won like a gazelle of the mountains"
"Clothilde will deny me, then?" said Conrad reproachfully.
"Until a year and a day are passed, I must deny," said the maiden. But when the snows of another spring are melted, and the fête has returned again, if you, Conrad Friedland, are of the same heart and will, I promise to be yours."
And Conrad touched his lips to the hand she lent him, and swore, "by Our Lady of the Snow," that, for a year and a day, he would make no claim to the hand of Clothilde, though he were twice the winner.
The morning was beautiful which ushered in the day of the fêtes. The maidens of the village were arrayed in their gayest dresses, and the young herdsmen of the valley had put on their choicest finery. The sports were held upon a soft bit of meadow-land at the foot of the great glacier which rises in the front of Lauterbrunnen. A barrier of earth and rocks, clothed with fir-trees, separated the green meadow from the crystal mountain which gleamed above. And ever, when the sun smote hotly, the glacier streams, which murmured upon either side of the meadow, made cool the air.
All the people of the village were assembled, and many a young hunter or herdsman beside, from the plains of Interlacken, or from the borders of the Brienzer-See, or from the farther vale of Grindelwald.
But Conrad had no fear of these; for already on many a day of fête, he had measured forces with them, and had borne off the prizes, whether in wrestling or in the cast of the granite boulders. This day he had given great care to his dress; a jerkin of neatly tanned chamois-leather set off his muscular figure, and it was dressed upon the throat and upon the front with those rare furs of the mountains, which betokened his huntsman's craft.
