Stechelberg, they left the char, in which they
had travelled so far, at a chalet, and ascended
a steep path in full view of the Breithorn glacier,
which rose up to the left, like a battlemented
wall of solid ice. The way now lay for some
time among pastures and pine-forests. Then they
came to a little colony of chalets, called Steinberg,
where they filled their water-bottles, got their
ropes in readiness, and prepared for the Tschlingel
glacier. A few minutes more, and they were on
the ice.

At this point, the guides called a halt,
and consulted together. One was for striking
across the lower glacier towards the left, and
reaching the upper glacier by the rocks which
bound it on the south. The other two preferred
the north, or right side; and this my brother
finally took. The sun was now pouring down with
almost tropical intensity, and the surface of the
ice, which was broken into long treacherous
fissures, smooth as glass and blue as the summer
sky, was both difficult and dangerous. Silently and
cautiously, they went, tied together at intervals
of about three yards each: with two guides in
front, and the third bringing up the rear. Turning
presently to the right, they found themselves
at the foot of a steep rock, some forty feet in height,
up which they must climb to reach the upper
glacier. The only way in which Battisto or my
brother could hope to do this, was by the help of a
rope steadied from below and above. Two of the
guides accordingly clambered up the face of
the crag by notches in the surface, and one
remained below. The rope was then let down, and
my brother prepared to go first. As he planted
his foot in the first notch, a smothered cry from
Battisto arrested him.

"Santa Maria! Signor! Look yonder!"

My brother looked, and there (he ever afterwards
declared), as surely as there is a heaven
above us all, he saw Christien Baumann standing
in the full sunlight, not a hundred yards distant!
Almost in the same moment that my brother
recognised him, he was gone. He neither faded,
nor sank down, nor moved away; but was simply
gone, as if he had never been. Pale as death,
Battisto fell upon his knees, and covered his face
with his hands. My brother, awe-stricken and
speechless, leaned against the rock, and felt that
the object of his journey was but too fatally
accomplished. As for the guides, they could not con-
ceive what had happened.

"Did you see nothing?" asked my brother and
Battisto, both together.

But the men had seen nothing, and the one who
had remained below, said, "What should I see
but the ice and the sun?"

To this my brother made no other reply than by
announcing his intention to have a certain
crevasse, from which he had not once removed his
eyes since he saw the figure standing on the
brink, thoroughly explored before he went a step
farther; whereupon the two men came down from
the top of the crag, resumed the ropes, and
followed my brother, incredulously. At the narrow
end of the fissure, he paused, and drove his
alpenstock firmly into the ice. It was an unusually
long crevasse—at first a mere crack, but widening
gradually as it went, and reaching down to
unknown depths of dark deep blue, fringed with
long pendent icicles, like diamond stalactites.
Before they had followed the course of this
crevasse for more than ten minutes, the youngest of
the guides uttered a hasty exclamation.

"I see something!" cried he. "Something
dark, wedged in the teeth of the crevasse, a great
way down!"

They all saw it: a mere indistinguishable mass,
almost closed over by the ice-walls at their feet.
My brother offered a hundred francs to the man
who would go down and bring it up. They all
hesitated.

"We don't know what it is," said one.

"Perhaps it is only a dead chamois," suggested
another.

Their apathy enraged him.

"It is no chamois," he said, angrily. "It is the
body of Christien Baumann, native of Kandersteg.
And, by Heaven, if you are all too cowardly to
make the attempt, I will go down myself!"

The youngest guide threw off his hat and coat,
tied a rope about his waist, and took a hatchet
in his hand.

"I will go, monsieur," said he; and without
another word, suffered himself to be lowered in.
My brother turned away. A sickening anxiety
came upon him, and presently he heard the dull
echo of the hatchet far down in the ice. Then there
was a call for another rope, and then—the men all
drew aside in silence, and my brother saw the
youngest guide standing once more beside the
chasm, flushed and trembling, with the body of
Christien lying at his feet.

Poor Christien! They made a rough bier with
their ropes and alpenstocks, and carried him, with
great difficulty, back to Steinberg. There, they
got additional help as far as Stechelberg, where
they laid him in the char, and so brought him on
to Lauterbrunnen. The next day, my brother
made it his sad business to precede the body to
Kandersteg, and prepare his friends for its
arrival. To this day, though all these things
happened thirty years ago, he cannot bear to
recal Marie's despair, or all the mourning that
he innocently brought upon that peaceful valley.
Poor Marie has been dead this many a year; and
when my brother last passed through the Kander
Thal on his way to the Ghemmi, he saw her grave,
beside the grave of Christien Baumann, in the
village burial-ground.

This is my brother's Ghost Story.

The chairman now announced that the clock
declared the teetotum spun out, and that the
meeting was dissolved. Yet even then, the
young fisherman could not refrain from once
more asking his question. This occasioned the
Gentlemen King Arthurs, as they got on their
hats and great coats, evidently to regard him as
a young fisherman who was touched in his head,