"Yes, Conrad."
The children now tried to climb down from the ice-wall where they had clambered up, but they did not succeed. There was ice all about them, as if they had mistaken the direction from which they had come. They turned hither and thither and were not able to extricate themselves from the ice. It was as if they were entangled in it. At last, when the boy followed the direction they had, as he thought, come, they reached more scattered boulders, but they were also larger and more awe-inspiring, as is usually the case at the edge of the glacier. Creeping and clambering, the children managed to issue from the ice. At the rim of the glacier there were enormous boulders, piled in huge heaps, such as the children had never yet seen. Many were covered all over with snow, others showed their slanting under-sides which were very smooth and finely polished as if they had been shoved along on them, many were inclined toward one another like huts and roofs, many lay upon one another like mighty clods. Not far from where the children stood, several boulders were inclined together, and over them lay broad slabs like a roof. The little house they thus formed was open in front, but protected in the rear and on both sides. The interior was dry, as not a single snow-flake had drifted in. The children were very glad that they were no longer in the ice, but stood on the ground again.
But meanwhile it had been growing dark.
"Sanna," said the boy, "we shall not be able to go down today, because it has become night, and because we might fall or even drop into some pit. We will go in under those stones where it is so dry and warm, and there we will wait. The sun will soon rise again, and then we shall run down from the mountain. Don't cry, please, don't cry, and I shall give you all the things to eat which grandmother has given us to take along."
The little girl did not weep. After they had entered under the stone roof where they could not only sit comfortably, but also stand and walk about she seated herself close to him and kept very quiet.
"Mother will not be angry," said Conrad, "we shall tell her of the heavy snow that has kept us, and she will say nothing; father will not, either. And if we grow cold, why then we must slap our hands to our bodies as the woodcutters did, and then we shall grow warm again."
"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.
Sanna was not at all so inconsolable because they could not run down the mountain and get home as he might have thought; for the immense exertion, of whose severity the children hardly had any conception, made the very sitting down seem sweet to them, unspeakably sweet, and they did not resist.
But now hunger asserted itself imperiously. Almost at the same time, both took their pieces of bread from their pockets and began to eat. They ate also the other things, such as little pieces of cake, almonds, raisins, and other trifles, which grandmother had put into their pockets.
"Sanna, now we must clean the snow from our clothes," said the boy, "so that we shall not become wet."