s with a rock-cliff at their backs and a fire of pine
wood blazing at their feet. Most likely amongst those friends was the
one he sought to-night.

"Still there's a chance that I may find him," he pleaded, and
crossing Piccadilly passed into Dover Street. Half way along the
street of milliners, he stopped before a house where a famous scholar
had his lodging.

"Is Mr. Kenyon in London?" he asked, and the man-servant replied to his
great relief:

"Yes, sir, but he is not yet at home."

"I will wait for him," said Chayne.

He was shown into the study and left there with a lighted lamp. The
room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Chayne mounted a
ladder and took down from a high corner some volumes bound simply in
brown cloth. They were volumes of the "Alpine Journal." He had chosen
those which dated back from twenty years to a quarter of a century. He
drew a chair up beside the lamp and began eagerly to turn over the
pages. Often he stopped, for the name of which he was in search often
leaped to his eyes from the pages. Chayne read of the exploits in the
Alps of Gabriel Strood. More than one new expedition was described,
many variations of old ascents, many climbs already familiar. It was
clear that the man was of the true brotherhood. A new climb was very
well, but the old were as good to Gabriel Strood, and the climb which
he had once made he had the longing to repeat with new companions. None
of the descriptions were written by Strood himself but all by
companions whom he had led, and most of them bore testimony to an
unusual endurance, an unusual courage, as though Strood triumphed
perpetually over a difficulty which his companions did not share and of
which only vague hints were given. At last Chayne came to that very
narrative which Sylvia had been reading on her way to Chamonix--and
there the truth was bluntly told for the first time.

Chayne started up in that dim and quiet room, thrilled. He had the proof
now, under his finger--the indisputable proof. Gabriel Strood suffered
from an affection of the muscles in his right thigh, and yet managed to
out-distance all his rivals. Hine's words drummed in Chayne's ears:

"Nevertheless he left us all behind."

Garratt Skinner: Gabriel Strood. Surely, surely! He replaced the volumes
and took others down. In the first which he opened--it was the autumn
number of nineteen years ago--there was again mention of the man; and the
climb described was the ascen