The Greater Love

As the blinding lens of the sun glittered level and its first rays poured over tree and rock, a man in the faded field-uniform of a Swiss officer of mountain artillery came out on the misty ledge across the chasm.

"You over there!" he shouted in English. "Here is a Swiss officer to speak with you! Show yourselves!"

Again, after waiting a few moments, he shouted: "Show yourselves or answer. It is a matter of life or death for you both!"

There was no reply to the invitation, no sound from the forest, no movement visible. Thin threads of vapour began to ascend from the tremendous depths of the precipice, steaming upward out of mist-choked gorges where, under thick strata of fog, night still lay dark over unseen Alpine valleys below.

The Swiss officer advanced to the cliff's edge and looked down upon a blank sea of cloud. Presently he turned east and walked cautiously along the rim of the chasm for a hundred yards. Here the gulf narrowed so that the cleft between the jutting crags was scarcely a hundred feet in width. And here he halted once more and called across in a resonant, penetrating voice: "Attention, you, over there in the Forest of Les Errues! You had better wake up and listen! Here is a Swiss officer come to speak with you. Show yourselves or answer!"

There came no sound from within the illuminated edges of the woods.