lash of lightning revealed the
hidden depths of a crevasse, bringing plainly before the eye chinks
and crannies not discernible in the strongest sunlight, so did the
glimpse of Spencer's soul illumine her understanding. He was not only
safeguarding her, but thinking of her, and the stolen knowledge set up
a bewildering tumult in her heart.

"Attention!" shouted Barth, halting and making a drive at something
with his ax.

The line stopped. Stampa's ringing voice came over Helen's head:

"What is that ahead there?"

"A new fall, I think. We ought to leave the moraine a little lower
down; but this was not here when we ascended."

How either man, Stampa especially, could see anything at all, was
beyond the girl's comprehension. The snow was absolutely blinding. The
wind was full in their faces, and it carried the huge flakes upward.
They seemed to spring from beneath rather than drop from the clouds.
Ever and anon a weirdly blue gleam of lightning would give a demoniac
touch to a scene worthy of the Inferno.

"Make for the ice--quick!" cried Stampa, and Barth turned sharply to
the left. Falling stones were now their chief danger, and both men
were anxious to avoid it.

After a brief scramble they mounted the curving glacier. A fiercer
gust shrieked at them and swept some small space clear of snow. Helen
had a dim vision of lightning playing above the crest of a great mound
on the edge of the ice field,--a mound that she did not remember
seeing before. Then the gale sank back to its sustained howling, the
snow swirled in denser volume, and the specter vanished.

Ere they had gone another hundred yards, Barth's hoarse warning
checked them again. "The bridge has fallen!" was his cry. "There has
been an ice movement."

There was a question in the man's words. Here was a nice point
submitted to his judgment,--whether to follow the line of the recently
formed schrund yawning at his feet, or endeavor to cross it, or go
back to the scene of the landslip? That was where Barth was lacking.
In that instant he resigned his pride of place without further effort
to retain it. He was in the van, but did not lead. Thenceforth Stampa
was master.

"What is the width--ten meters?" demanded the old guide cheerfully.

"About that."

"All the better. It is not deep here. The shock of that avalanche
opened it up. You will find a way down. Cut the steps close together.
You know how to polish them, Karl?"

"Yes, I can do that," sa