The boy shook his head. "Father cannot leave the ore till the furnace is tapped," he said.
"Well, go and beg him to come as soon as he can," and the boy slowly strolled away.
The towering peaked walls of the Ortler--Madatsch, and the glaciers of Trafoy--stared pitilessly down on the forsaken pair--there was not a projecting rock, not a cave that could offer shelter to the sick man. They stood up appallingly bare and steep and almost perpendicular, like giant walls built up to protect the world's Holy of Holies. And there it was too--that Holy of Holies. The three Holy Wells poured out in the moon-shine like rivulets of light, from the hearts of the wooden images of the Virgin mother, the Redeemer and the Baptist, which were protected by a little wooden structure which might well afford shelter to the sick man also. There--if she could only get him there; and she whispered in his ear, imploring and urging him till at last he heard her and began to move.
"Dear master--if you could only go a few steps farther--there flows the holy water--that will make you well--"
The sick man caught her words. "Where--where?" he said.
"Come--only come, I will help you up--there, now one step--one more--we are there now." With a tremendous effort she had got him there, and she let him softly slide down on to the soft ground under the shrine in front of the Madonna.
"You are kneeling before our Mother Mary," she whispered reverently, and she bathed his brow and eyes with the miraculous water.
"Oh, Holy Virgin! have mercy upon us," she prayed, and she held up the folded hands of the blind man who no longer had strength enough to raise them in prayer.
"Have mercy upon us!" he stammered, after her "Rosa mystica, maris stella, stella matutina"; his feeble lips went through the thousand-times repeated rosary, and then his head sank back in the girl's lap, and he lost consciousness.