"See, mademoiselle, there is Aenchen Baumer's house."
They had come to an opening in the pines which revealed the broad yellow valley beneath, with its sunlit road running like a thread of silk through it. Grete's friend's house was a little white building, with green casements, and a few vines growing up one of the gables; it was separated from the road by a paling which interrupted the long line of rough stone posts which a paternal government had stuck in the ground to prevent carriages tumbling still farther down into the bed of the hollow.
"You have come a long way out of your road, Grete," said Miss Brunel.
"I came to accompany you, mademoiselle. I can easily go back to Aenchen's house before the evening."
The upward road now grew more and more jagged, rough, and full of mud-holes, until, at last, they left the forest region altogether, and got into the high pasture districts of the mountain. Finally, as the path became a track, grass-grown and rocky, they arrived at a square grey building, with a small garden attached, which stood on the summit of the shoulder of the hill.
"It is the Feldberg Inn," said Grete.
"Is it pleasant to live on the top of the mountain?" asked her companion.
"Oh, yes, mademoiselle; only it is a little cold. And when you look out at night—in the moonlight—it frightens one; for all the house seems surrounded by a yellow mist, which floats about and makes figures, and then it sweeps away, and you see the garden sharp and clear. It is the clouds, you know. Franz Gersbach has told me of his having been on the top of the Niessen one morning before sunrise, and while all the great mountains opposite—the Jungfrau, and the Mönch, and the Eiger, and all these—were still cold and dark, he saw Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc, away down in the south, with a pale pink flame on their peaks in the midst of the green sky. Here we have no snow on our mountains, except in the winter-time; and then sometimes the people up here have their supplies cut off for a long time."
There was a tall, fair-faced, sleepy-looking man standing at the door of the inn, with whom Grete shook hands. The giant blushed slightly, answered her questions in laconic monosyllables, and then led the way into the house, apparently relieved to be out of the observation of the two girls.
"It is the landlord's brother," said Grete, "and a friend of mine."