He now made his way down the mountain again, scanning the chasms and sometimes uttering a long-drawn-out cry, which was immediately swallowed up in the silent immensity. He kept putting his ear to the ground listening. Sometimes he thought he heard a voice and began to run, shouting himself. When he heard nothing more, he sat down exhausted and helpless. About noon he had his lunch and fed the dog, who was as tired as his master. Afterwards he resumed his search.
When evening came he was still walking, having covered thirty miles of mountain. Finding himself too far from home to get back and too tired to drag himself any farther, he dug a hole in the snow and crouched in it with the dog under a blanker which he had brought. There they lay, man and dog, pressed against each other for warmth and still frozen to the marrow.
Ulrich hardly slept, his mind haunted by dreams and his limbs shaking.

Just before he got up; his legs were stiff as iron rods. He had lost his nerve and he could have screamed aloud in his terror. Whenever he thought he heard a sound his heart thumped so violently that he almost collapsed.

All at once he realised that he, too, would die of cold in this lonely spot and fear of death whipped his energy and restored his morale. He was now on his way down towards the inn, stumbling and getting up again, Sam trailing behind him, limping on three legs. They did not reach Schwarenbach till four o’clock in the afternoon; the place was empty. The young man lit the fire, had a meal and went to sleep, too exhausted to think clearly.

He slept for a very long time the sleep of the dead; but suddenly a voice shouting his name ‘Ulrich’, roused him from his torpor and brought him to his feet. Was it a dream? Was it one of those unaccountable nightmares that disturb our sleep when we are worried? No, he could still hear it, a loud cry, which had entered his body through the ear and penetrated to the tips of his twitching fingers. He was sure that someone had shouted the name ‘Ulrich’. There was someone there, close to the house; he was quite certain of it. So he opened the door and bellowed with the full force of his lungs: ‘Is that you, Gaspard?’ There was no answer. Not a sound, not a whisper, not a groan, nothing! It was dark with a ghostly half-light off the snow.

The wind had risen, the icy wind which splits rocks and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights. It came in short gusts, more withering, more deadly than the fiery blast from the desert. Ulrich shouted again: ‘Gaspard!Gaspard! Gaspard!’
He paused but everything remained silent on the mountain. He felt a sudden shock of panic terror and rushed back into the inn, shut and bolted the door and then collapsed shaking on to a chair, convinced that he had been called by his companion at the moment of death.

He was certain of it as one is of being alive and eating bread. Old Gaspard Hari had been lying dying for two days and three nights somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep crevasses, whose spotless whiteness is more sinister than the darkness of a vault. He had been dying slowly for two days and three nights and he had died just at that moment, thinking of his companion. His spirit , as soon as it was free, had flown to the inn, where Ulrich was asleep, and it was this spirit which had called him by means of that mysterious terrible power which the spirits of the dead have to haunt the living. It was this voiceless spirit which had communicated direct with the overwrought spirit of the sleeper; it had uttered its last farewell or perhaps a reproach or curse on the man who had given up the search too soon.
Ulrich sensed its presence there, quite close, on the other side of the wall, behind the door he had just closed. It was prowling round, like a night bird brushing a lighted window-pane with its wings. The distracted young man was ready to shriek in his terror. He wanted to run right away but he dared not go out of the house; he did not dare now and he would never dare go out, for the ghost would be there day and night round the house, until the old guide’s body was found and buried in the consecrated ground of a cemetery.

Day dawned and Kunzi recovered himself a little in a cheerful sunlight. He got his own dinner and made some soup for the dog, and then sat, not moving, slumped on a chair in an agony of fear, thinking of the old man lying in the snow.
As soon as darkness fell on the mountains fresh terrors assailed him. He was now walking up and down in the kitchen, in the dim light of a candle; he strode from one end of the room to the other, listening, listening for the terrifying cry of last night to break the sinister silence outside. He was alone, poor devil, more utterly alone than anyone had ever been before! He was alone in this measureless waste of snow, alone six thousand feet above the world of men, above all human habitations, above the bustle, the din, the throb of life, alone in ice-cold space. He was tortured by a wild desire to escape anywhere, anyhow, to throw himself over the precipice down to Leuk; but he did not dare open the door, convinced that the other, the dead man, would bar his path, in order that he too might not be left alone up there.

About midnight, tired of walking, he dozed off at last on a chair, for he shrank from his bed as from a haunted spot.
Suddenly the strident cry of the night before smote on his ears so piercingly shrill that he stretched out his arms to push the ghost away and fell backwards over the chair.
Sam, woken up by the noise began to howl as frightened dogs will and moved round the room to discover where the danger came from. When he got near the door, he sniffed under it, snorting and snuffling loudly, his coat bristling and his tail erect, growling.

Kunzi, mad with terror, had got up, and grabbing his chair by the leg, he screamed: ‘Don’t come in or I’ll kill you!’ And the dog, excited by the threat, barked wildly at the enemy who was defying his master’s voice. Sam gradually calmed down and returned to his place near the fire, but he was still uneasy, his head erect and his eyes blazing, growling and showing his teeth.
Ulrich recovered himself but, feeling weak from the shock, went for a bottle of brandy from the chest and drank several glasses one after the other. His brain became fuddled, his fear left him and a fiery fever course through his veins.

Next day he hardly ate at all, only drinking the spirit. And for several days on end after that he remained as stupid as a brute beast. Whenever the thought of Gaspard Hari came back to his mid he went on drinking till he fell to the floor overcome by the alcohol. And he lay there on his face, dead drunk, his limbs paralysed, snoring, with his forehead on the ground. But he had hardly digested the maddening, burning liquor when the same cry ‘Ulrich’ woke him up like a bullet in the brain. And he dragged himself to his feet, still tottering, still catching hold of things so as not to fall and calling Sam to help him. The dog, who seemed to have gone mad like his master, rushed to the door, scratched at it with his claws and gnawed at it with his long white teeth, while the young man, with head thrown back, swallowed, as if it was a drink after a race, great gulps of the brandy, which would again dull his brain and his memory in his frantic terror.