It was night; the white heads of the glaciers looked down like pale watchers into the silent and sleeping Trafoy Thal. There it lay, deep in the shadows of the sheltering mountain walls, the lonely little valley. Fragments and boulders of fallen rocks strewed the earth--a sea of stones--and only here and there a red glow shone in the darkness, the light of the smelting furnaces of which several were scattered about; not a living creature was to be seen far and near.
Tired to death and with bruised feet the lonely couple toiled through the stony chaos towards the still invisible green nook, where the miraculous waters of the three Holy Wells take their rise.
"Do you see anything?" asked Donatus in a weary tone, "all is so still--"
"I see nothing far and wide," answered the child.
"Beata," said Donatus, "if she is not here either!--" he broke off, the terrible thought choked his utterance.
And on they went again. He listened for the least sound that might betray the presence of a travelling encampment and she strained her keen sight for his sake; but sharp as were her eyes, quick as was his ear, there was nothing to be seen, nothing stirring. They had traversed the whole valley.
"I can hear the rush of water, are we not near the Holy Wells?" asked Donatus.
"Yes, here we are," said Beata, trembling as if she feared to tell him.
"All merciful God!--and I can go no farther." Donatus sank to the ground on the spot where he was standing, and hid his face in his clasped hands.
"Oh, good God! what misery!" lamented the girl. "Lie here a while, I will go back to the smelting houses, and get some news of the Duchess."
"Beata, you can walk no farther," sighed Donatus.
"For you I can do anything," she said boldly and steadily, and soon the blind man lost the sound of her steps in the distance. An endless term of waiting in motionless patience ensued, and the agonised watcher felt the dull silence around like the influence of a petrifying basilisk, slowly tormenting its victim to death. He listened and listened, and yet could hear nothing but the singing of the blood in his ears, the ceaseless trickle of the three streams close at hand, and the distant thunder of the waterfalls that fling themselves from the precipices of the Königspitze. From time to time his thoughts became confused; he heard the noisy travelling-train of the Duchess approaching, he called to her what his errand was, but she did not hear, he could not make himself intelligible and he tried to scream but he could not. The horses went over him, he felt their trampling feet, then he started up and felt all round him; the hard stones on which he was lying had bruised him all over, and the tramp of horses that he had fancied he heard was no more than the roar of the water. All was silent, and all remained silent. Then again a dread came over him lest Beata should never return, some harm might have befallen the child among the smelters--a half wild crew--and he, a miserable mere shade of a man, he could not save her, he must depend for succour on a weak and helpless woman. He loathed himself; could God take delight in such a miserable cripple? "Wretch, blind feeble wretch--die!" he groaned, and his limbs shook with fever. "Son of all misfortune, what are you alive for? That you may scatter abroad the seeds of misery which you bear in your bosom--" and then again fear for the child overcame him, and he shouted to the night, "Beata, Beata, where are you?" till once more his consciousness was clouded.