As the sky grew brighter friends began to recognize each other.
"Hold! There is Cousin Daniel of Soldatenthal. You here too?"
"What! Cousin Nanette! But where is she?"
"Yonder, by the large oak, at Uncle Hans's fire."
They clasp each other's hand. Some slept, some piled branches and broken planks upon the fires. Flasks passed around, and those who had warmed themselves made way for their shivering neighbors. But impatience was gaining upon the crowd.
"Ah!" cried one, "we have not come here only to stretch our legs. It is time to look around, to agree upon our movements."
"Yes! yes! let us organize and elect our leaders!" cried many.
"No; all are not yet here. They are yet coming from Dagsbourg and Saint-Quirin," replied others.
Indeed, as day advanced, the pathways of the mountain seemed full of people. There were already some hundreds in the valley--wood-cutters, charcoal-burners, and others--without counting the women and children.
Nothing could be more picturesque than that halt in the snow, at the bottom of a defile covered to the clouds with high firs; to the right, valley following valley as far as the eye could reach; to the left, the ruins of Falkenstein, reaching, as it seemed, to the sky; and before you groups of thickly bearded men with gloomy brows, broad square shoulders, and hands callous from labor. Some of them, taller than their fellows, were red-haired and white-skinned, and seemed strong as the oaks of the forest. Of this number were old Materne of Hengst and his two sons, Frantz and Kasper. These three, armed with short Innspruck rifles, their high gaiters of blue canvas with leather buttons reaching above the knee, their bodies covered with hare-skin jackets, and their slouched hats pushed far back upon their heads, did not deign to approach the fire. Since one o'clock they had sat upon the felled trunk of a fir by the border of the brook, their eyes constantly on the watch, and their feet buried in the snow. From time to time the old man would say to his sons:
"What are they shivering for yonder? I never saw a milder night at this season; it is a fine hunting night; the brooks are not yet frozen."
Every hunter as he passed pressed their hands, and then joined his fellows, who formed a separate band, among whom but few words passed, for silence is one of the great virtues of the chase.