"Yes, Conrad," replied Sanna.
The children went before their little house. Conrad first brushed off his little sister. He grasped the corners of her coat and shook them, took off the hat he had put on her head, emptied it of snow and wiped off the snow that remained in it. Then he rid himself as best he could of the snow that lay on him.
At that time it had entirely stopped snowing. The children could not feel one flake descending.
They returned into their stone-hut and sat down. Getting up had showed them how tired they really were, and they were glad to sit down again. Conrad laid down the calfskin bag which he had strapped on his shoulders. He took out the cloth in which grandmother had wrapped a pasteboard-box and several paper packages and put it about his shoulders for greater warmth. He also took the two pieces of wheat-bread out of his wallet and gave Sanna both. The child ate them most eagerly. A part of them, however, she gave back to Conrad as she saw he was not eating anything. He accepted it and ate it.
From that time on, the children merely sat and looked. As far as the eye could reach in the twilight there was nothing but snow, whose minute crystals began to scintillate in a strange manner as if they had absorbed the light of day and were emitting it again now.
Night fell with the rapidity usual in high altitudes. Soon it was dark all about, only the snow continued to glimmer faintly. Not only had it stopped snowing but the clouds began to grow thin and to part, for the children saw the gleam of a star. As the snow really emitted light, as it were, and the clouds no longer hung down from the sky, they could see from their cave how the snowy hillocks round about were sharply outlined against the dark sky. The cave was warmer than it had been at any other place during the day, and so the children rested, clinging closely to each other and even forgot to be afraid of the darkness. Soon the stars multiplied, they gleamed forth now here, now there, until it seemed that there was not a single cloud left in the whole sky.
This was the moment when people in the valleys are accustomed to light their candles. At first, only one is kindled, in order to make light in the room; or, possibly, only a pine-splinter; or the fire is burning in the hearth, and all windows of human habitations grow bright and shed lustre into the snowy night; but all the more tonight, Christmas evening, when many more lights were kindled, in order to shine full upon the presents for the children which lay upon the tables or hung on the trees—innumerable candles were lit; for in nearly every house, every cot, every room, there were children for whom the Christ-child had brought presents which had to be shown by the light of candles.
The boy had thought one could very quickly come down from the mountain and yet, not a single one of the lights burning that night in the valley shone up to them. They saw nothing but the pale snow and the dark sky, all else was rendered invisible by the distance. At this hour, the children in all valleys were receiving their Christmas presents. These two alone sat up there by the edge of the glacier and the finest presents meant for them on this day lay in little sealed packages in the calfskin bag in the rear of the cave.
The snow-clouds had sunk below the mountains on all sides and a vault entirely dark-blue, almost black, full of densely clustered burning stars extended above the children; and through the midst of them was woven a shimmering broad milky band which they had, indeed, seen also below in the valley, but never so distinctly. The night was advancing. The children did not know that the stars change their position and move toward the west, else they might have recognized the hour of night by their progress. New stars came and the old ones disappeared, but they believed them to be always the same. It grew somewhat brighter about the children by the radiance of the stars; but they saw no valley, no known places, but everywhere white—only white. Only some dark peak, some dark knob became visible looming up out of the shimmering waste. The moon was nowhere to be seen in the heavens, perhaps it had set early with the sun, or it had not yet risen.
After a long time the boy said: "Sanna, you must not sleep; for do you remember what father said, that if one sleeps in the mountains one will freeze to death, as the old hunter slept and sat four months dead on that stone and no one had known where he was."