Switzerland is a wonderful country, full of beautiful snowy mountains, where gleaming ice-fields shine, and dark pine forests grow.
Hans lived with his aunt and his uncle in a village up among these mountains. He could not remember any other home, for his father and his mother had died when he was a little baby, and his aunt and his uncle, who had not a child of their own, had taken care of him ever since.
Han's uncle was a guide. He showed the safest ways and best paths to travellers, who came from all over the world to see the mountains.
Every summer the little town where Hans lived was full of strangers. Some of them came in carriages, some on foot; some were rich, some were poor; but all of them wanted to climb to the mountain-tops, where the snows are always white and dazzling against the blue sky.
The paths over the mountains are slippery and dangerous, leading across the ice-fields by cracks and chasms most fearful to see. The travellers dared not climb them without someone to show the way, and nobody in the village knew the way so well as Hans's uncle.
The uncle was so brave and trusty that he was known throughout the whole country, and everybody who came to the mountains wanted him as guide.
One day a Prince came, and no sooner had he rested from his journey than he sent for Hans's uncle.
That very day Hans was five years old, and so his uncle told him that because it was his birthday, he, too, might go to see the Prince.
This was a great treat for Hans, and his aunt made haste to dress him in his best clothes.
"You must be good," she told him a dozen times before he set out with his uncle to the hotel where the Prince was staying.