ked Hine, nervously, and Garratt
Skinner laughed.

"Ask Pierre Delouvain!" he said, and himself put the question. Pierre
laughed in his turn.

"Bah! I snap my fingers at the Brenva climb," said he. "We shall be
in Chamonix to-night"; and Garratt Skinner translated the words to
Walter Hine.

Breakfast was prepared and eaten. Walter Hine was silent through the
meal. He had not the courage to say that he was afraid; and Garratt
Skinner played upon his vanity.

"We shall be in Chamonix to-night. It will be a fine feather in your cap,
Wallie. One of the historic climbs!"

Walter Hine drew a deep breath. If only the day were over, and the party
safe on the rough path through the woods on the other side of the
mountain! But he held his tongue. Moreover, he had great faith in his
idol and master, Garratt Skinner.

"You saved my life yesterday," he said; and upon Garratt Skinner's face
there came a curious smile. He looked steadily into the blaze of the fire
and spoke almost as though he made an apology to himself.

"I saw a man falling. I saw that I could save him. I did not think. My
hand had already caught him."

He looked up with a start. In the east the day was breaking, pale and
desolate; the lower glacier glimmered into view beneath them; the
gigantic amphitheater of hills which girt them in on three sides loomed
out of the mists from aerial heights and took solidity and shape,
westward the black and rugged Peuteret ridge, eastward the cliffs of Mont
Maudit, and northward sweeping around the head of the glacier, the great
ice-wall of Mont Blanc with its ruined terraces and inaccessible cliffs.

"Time, Wallie," said Garratt Skinner, and he rose to his feet and called
to Pierre Delouvain. "There are only three of us. We shall have to go
quickly. We do not want to carry more food than we shall need. The rest
we can send back with our blankets by the porters."

Pierre Delouvain justified at once the ill words which had been spoken of
him by Michel Revailloud. He thought only of the burden which through
this long day he would have to carry on his back.

"Yes, that is right," he said. "We will take what we need for the day.
To-night we shall be in Chamonix."

And thus the party set off with no provision against that most probable
of all mishaps--the chance that sunset might find them still upon the
mountain side. Pierre Delouvain, being lazy and a worthless fellow, as
Revailloud had said, agreed. But the suggesti