'I will bring him back,' he thought, 'and then she will smile again.'
He had been trained in the lore of the high hills too well not to know that it would take him several days to reach the Hintere Umbalthörl; but he said to himself that this must be as it would. He would climb on and on, sleep in any hut he could, and find what food he might. The Bohemian boy had crossed many mountains and seas and deserts before he had ransomed his brother.
It was a fine morning, with light pleasant winds. There was a clear blue in the sky, though north-east there was a brown haze, such as hunters fear, upon the hills.
'It will rain or snow to-morrow,' thought Bela, who had been made wise in the signs of the weather. But even that prevision did not deter him; he had his liberty and he meant to use it. He had been well trained to all bodily exercises, and he could walk long and fast without fatigue. His slender fair limbs were as strong as steel, and his health was perfect. He knew all the tracks of the home-lying woods, and he wanted no one to guide him. He got, with promptitude and address, out of sight of the terraces and towers of Hohenszalras, and soon entered what was called the Schwarzenwald, a dense pine-wood ascending abruptly the mountain side from the gardens; the only place where the wildness of the hills came in unbroken contact and close proximity to the lawns and flowers of the south side of the schloss, the lower spurs of the Gross Glöckner descending there so steep and stern that they enclosed the parterres with a gigantic rampart of granite.
The contrast of the rose gardens with these huge overhanging heights had always so pleased the tastes of the Szalras châtelaines, that they had never allowed any attempts to be made to change or modify the savage grandeur and sombre wilds of the black wood.
He was already a trained pedestrian, and he covered five miles without pausing to breathe himself. Then he thought he had come far enough to make it safe to pause and eat. He drank his milk and opened his knapsack. There was turf still about him, and a few trees, but he had come into the rocky region. Huge walls of red and grey marbles leaned over him; white limestone crags faced him. Precipices, black with pines and firs, shelved downward. He was still on his mother's land, but in a part unknown to him.
Once rested, he climbed up manfully, straining his little velvet breeches and soaking his silver-buckled shoes in the wet moss as he went; for in the Schwarzenwald regular paths soon ceased. There was the barest track visible, made by sheep, and pushing its upward way under branches, over boulders, and through wimpling burns. It was the loneliest part of all the woods and hills; descending as it did to the rose gardens of the burg, the hunters and shepherds seldom passed through it. Steep and solitary, crowned with bare rocks, and leading only to the glacier slopes, few steps ever went over its short grass save those of woodland animals and of shepherds' flocks. At this time of the year even the latter were not near. They had been already brought down to their stables from the green stretches of pasture between the rocks. Bela met no one; not even one of his own peasantry.
He climbed and climbed uninterrupted, at first enjoying his solitude rapturously, his triumph boisterously, and then going on more solemnly, being a little awed by the sense of utter silence round him, in which no sound was heard except of rippling water, of blowing boughs, and afar off some faint tinkle of a church bell from a distant hamlet.
His spirits were exalted and full of enthusiasm. Joined to his boldness and ardour he had the German love of the mystical and marvellous. All the vast white range of the Glöckner to him was as a fairyland opening on enchanted empires all his own. All the forenoon he was happy.
His brain, was busy with many pictures as he went. He saw his search successful and his father found; he saw his happy return, and the crowd of the glad household which would flock to meet his steps; he thought how he would kneel down at her feet, and never rise until his prayer should be heard, and his mother smile again; he thought how he would cry out to her, 'Oh, mother, mother! I have brought him home!' and how she would look, and the light and the warmth come back into her face. It was so little to do—only to climb amidst these kindly familiar mountains that had been always above him and around him since first his eyes had opened. Wratislaw had gone over lands, and seas, and deserts, and braved the jaws of lions, and the steel of foemen, and the dragon's breath of the hot sand wind; he himself had so little to do; only to climb some rough uneven ground, some green steep pastures, some smooth fields of ice. He felt sad to think it was such a little thing.