"Look out, now, Carl. We must cross that deep chasm ahead of us very carefully. It is wider than it looks. Here! Follow me."
Fritz led the way to a place where the chasm was narrow enough for him to spring across with the aid of his mountain staff. Carl followed, while Fritz reached over from the other side and seized the boy as he landed. Carl laughed. He wasn't the least bit frightened.
"I think you did that because of what mother said, Uncle Fritz. You act as though I were a child, but I am very sure-footed and have been in slippery places before."
"No doubt of that, Carl. You are a brave boy, too. But it is very easy to make a misstep in such a place. I shouldn't like it very much if you were down at the bottom of that chasm at this moment. It wouldn't be easy getting you up again, even though it is not deep."
Here and there the two travellers met little streams of water flowing along over the surface. The day had been quite warm for this time of the year, the ice had melted a little, and the water was running off in these streams.
"O, uncle, look!" cried Carl, as they came near another chasm in the glacier. "Here is another bridge of ice over which we can cross. How clear it is; it looks like glass."
By this time the moon was shining in all her glory. "It is like fairy-land," said Carl to himself as he looked back at the glacier which they were just leaving, and then onward to the mountain-tops in the distance, lighted up by the soft yellow light.
"The mountains are God's true temples, aren't they?" said Fritz, after a few moments. "But come, my dear, it is getting late. We must move quickly now, even though we are tired. The lights in the village above us are calling, 'Hurry, hurry, good people, before we sleep for the night!'"