Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy water into a
strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some meat in a basket, slung
them over his back, took his alpine staff in his hand, and set off for
the mountains.
On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and as he looked
in at the windows, whom should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out
of the bars, and looking very disconsolate.
"Good morning, brother," said Hans; "have you any message for the King
of the Golden River?"
Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars with all his
strength; but Hans only laughed at him, and advising him to make
himself comfortable till he came back again, shouldered his basket,
shook the bottle of holy water in Schwartz's face till it frothed
again, and marched off in the highest spirits in the world.
It was, indeed, a morning that might have made anyone happy, even
with no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay
stretched along the valley, out of which rose the massy
mountains--their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly
distinguishable from the floating vapour, but gradually ascending till
they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy colour
along the angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through
their fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red splintered
masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of
fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced
down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far beyond,
and far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and
changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the eternal
snow.
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