“Alas! Maiden Leoline,” replied the ragged little shepherdess, “I weep because the white lamb which my father bade me guard has strayed away and is nowhere to be found. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?”
And the little shepherdess wept afresh, while her halted flock lowered their silly heads and bleated mournfully.
“A white lamb?” said Leoline. “Come, take heart; he cannot be far away. We shall find him, I am sure, for the sun is still high above the west, and the day is far from spent. Do you but remain here and guard your flock and mine, while I go to search the pasture by the snows.” And with these words the kind maiden turned her face to the height.
Through upland pasture and rocky dell fared Leoline, scanning the waving flower-strewn grass for the lost white lamb, and listening for a forlorn crying; but of the lamb she had neither sight nor sound. Little by little the afternoon drew to a close. Presently a chill of cold and dark crept into the air as the sun vanished behind a great mass of sombre cloud.
Finding a mountain torrent near at hand, Leoline followed the edge of the roaring stream toward the wild steeps of the mountain.
The sky was now but one vast and seemingly motionless sea of cloud. Beneath this cloudy tent, however, floating strangely and swiftly by, fled steamy wisps and fragments of shapeless mist, and ever and anon one of these fugitives enveloped Leoline in its chilly veil. Bravely making her way along a path every step more dangerous growing, the maiden at length attained the last sweep of open land. Strewn with lovely flowers was the field; and two strange crags, which Leoline had never seen before, rose from its further bound.
Now as Leoline gazed upon the two crags, the level floor of rock lifted high between them, and the pinnacled wall of cliff rising behind, she beheld that they formed together a marvelous great throne, of which the two crags were the carven arms and the cliff-wall the sculptured back—a throne for a giant being mighty as the mountain: a being whose feet were of the earth and whose body rose to the clouds and the marshaled stars. And this chair stood exalted high, strange and noble and dark, now outlined against the sullen clouds, now caught up and hidden in their depths.
Presently the unseen sun sank below the crest of the mountain and a wild dark fell. The clouds rolled about the craggy throne.
For a long moment Leoline, awed yet unafraid, gazed at the Giant of the Mountain