tainless as the soul of a
child.

"Inshallah!! Now all is well!"

It was the deep voice of Yusuf Ali; and Lenox heard his cheery little
friend, the Havildar, make answer, "True talk, brother; the gods favour
those who go forward!"

Cheered by the prospect of getting dry, and by the sun's mysterious
power to exhilarate all things living, the whole party quickened their
pace. But in less than an hour fresh clouds had rolled up, blotting
out the sun; and on the glacier they overtook the yaks and their
drivers, lumbering soberly through the snow-drifts with true Oriental
disregard for time.

The men chorussed voluble excuses; but since time meant life or death,
Lenox waved them aside impatiently, and ordered the guide to go on,
making his own tracks as best he might. The which he did, with the
help of two others, pressed into service by promises of liberal
backsheesh, stepping out valiantly at the head of the mixed procession;
his sister's remains--tied up in a wisp of turban--bobbing over his
shoulder; driving on before him a donkey followed by a goat. And the
unerring instinct by which this despised creature of God avoided hidden
fissures and crevasses must needs be seen to be believed.

The guides, keeping in the tracks of the animals, marked off dangerous
places with their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the
eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet
off the ground; his keen little pony--long since christened 'The
Rat'--almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself.
And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would
follow,--even into a crevasse!

Through four mortal hours they plodded on, a strange procession of
muffled figures, leaving in their wake a dark, contorted track, as
though some wounded thing had writhed its way upward through the frozen
snow.

And by one o'clock the crest was in sight! "The gods favour those who
go forward!" Chundra Sen had spoken truth. Another half hour would
see them through the worst; and Lenox--scarcely able to believe in his
good fortune--urged The Rat to renewed exertion, and shouted to his men
to hurry on.

But the gods are nothing if not capricious; and the 'advanced guard,'
reaching the summit, found no promised land spread out below them, but
a mass of blue-black cloud, heavy with snow, surging up the valley,
with the rush of a tidal wave and the breath of an iceberg, blotting
out creation