e snow, watching him clamber down among the rocks, where
an alpinist orderly joined them.

Gary presently appeared at the door of the observation station. "Has he
gone?" he inquired, without interest.

"Yes," said Carfax.

"Is he going to do anything for us?"

"I don't know.... _No!_"

Gary lingered, kicked at a salamander, then turned and went indoors.
Carfax sat down on a rock and sucked at his empty pipe.

Later the three officers in the observation station came out to the door
again and looked at him, but turned back into the doorway without saying
anything. And after a while Carfax, feeling slightly feverish, went
indoors, too.

In the square, whitewashed room Gray and Flint were playing cut-throat
poker; Gary was at the telephone, but the messages received or transmitted
appeared to be of no importance. There had never been any message of
importance from the Falcon Peak or to it. There was likely to be none.

Ennui, inertia, dry rot--and four men, sometimes silently, sometimes
violently cursing their isolation, but always cursing it--afraid in their
souls lest they fall to cursing one another aloud as they had begun to
curse in their hearts.

Months ago rain had fallen; now snow fell, and vast winds roared around
them from the Alps. But nothing else ever came to the Falcon Peak, except
a fierce, red-eyed _Laemmergeyer_ sheering above the peak on enormous
pinions, or a few little migrating birds fluttering down, half frozen,
from the high air lanes. Now and then, also, came to them a staff officer
from below, British sometimes, sometimes French, who lingered no longer
than necessary and then went back again, down into friendly deeps where
were trees and fields and familiar things and human companionship, leaving
them to their hell of silence, of solitude, and of each other.

The tide of war had never washed the base of their granite cliffs; the
highest battle wave had thundered against the Vosges beyond earshot; not
even a deadened echo of war penetrated those silent heights; not a Taube
floated in the zenith.

In the squatty, whitewashed ruin which once had been the eyrie of some
petty predatory despot, and which now served as an observatory for two
idle divisions below in the valley, stood three telescopes. Otherwise the
furniture consisted of valises, trunks, a table and chairs, a few books,
several newspapers, and some tennis balls lying on the floor.

Carfax seated himself at one of the telescope