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[Pg 100] <h2>The Alpen-Echo.</h2> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> Long, long years ago, a young girl wandering with her herd of goats upon the Mettenalp, lost her way amidst a mountain storm, and fell into a chasm of the rock, where she lay white and lifeless. The terrified goats reached the valley beneath, but the young girl was never again heard of. The spirits of the great mountain had claimed her for an Alpen-Echo, and every day, for hundreds of years after, she floated amongst the snow-covered peaks and crags of the Mettenalp, answering every horn that sounded from the hunters or cow-herds, with a soft, sweet note, so sad and distant it was like a soul in pain, and tears came to your eyes—you knew not why—as you listened to its exquisite music. "Come, follow me! Follow me to my secret haunts," wailed the Echo. "Give me my soul! Give me my soul!"—but no one through all the centuries had ever climbed to the Echo's hiding-place. "If only I could make them understand!" sobbed the Echo,[Pg 101] "my long bondage would cease. The first foot that treads my prison, frees me, and gives me rest." <hr style='width: 25%;' /> However, all the world was too busy to listen to the poor Echo, and she called and cried in vain through the misty ages! <hr style='width: 25%;' /> A boy, with a long Alpen-horn in his hand, stood by a châlet far away in the wilds of Switzerland. Every now and then he blew a few wailing notes upon the horn—notes that echoed across the valley, up to the snow-covered heights beyond—and he smiled as the answer floated clearly back again. "The echoes are talking together, to-day," he said to himself. "They love the bright air and the sunshine;" and again he blew a long, changing note, that died away softly into the far distance. "Tra-la-la-a-a" came faintly from the opposite mountain—but to the boy's astonishment the echo did not now cease, and fade away, as it always had done before. It shifted from point to point; its elfin tones ringing sweet and sad like the bugle of a Fairy Huntsman. All that day the Echo sounded in the boy's ears, all night it whispered amongst the mountain tops; and as soon as it became daylight he sprang up, determined that he would climb the side of the opposite valley, and find out the reason of the strange music.[Pg 102] A pale-green light tinged the sky, the mountains looked dark and forbidding, and from the peaks above came the soft sighing of the distant Echo. "It is like a soul in pain," thought the boy. "I must find out what it means!" and he began to climb higher and higher, until the valley lay far beneath him, and his home looked a little brown speck amidst a sea of fields and pine trees. Before him still sounded the Elfin voice, now dying into a whisper, now ringing clear and distinct, as though close beside him—but always with the same beseeching sadness: "Follow me! Follow me to my secret haunts! Give me my soul! Give me my soul!" And the boy climbed on until he reached the rocky crag which formed the summit of the mountain. "At last!" he cried, as he stretched out his arms to clasp the Echo's fairy-like form that floated mistily before him ... but the Echo had faded from his sight as he approached her; and her last words were borne faintly towards him as she vanished into the golden glory of the sunshine— "At last! At last! I am at rest at last!" <hr style='width: 25%;' /> The boy had learnt the secret of the Alpen-Echo. He had freed her soul from its long bondage, and a few days afterwards they found him lying with a smile upon his face on the topmost peak of the Mettenalp. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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