n as the breakfast was
ended a wallet was filled with food, a couple of bottles with water, and
Melchior took the rope, passed his head and right arm through it, and
looked at Dale as much as to say, "I am ready."

"Will these things be all right?" said the latter, taking an ice-axe
from where it hung up on a tree; and he pointed to the basket.

"There is no one here to touch them, herr."

"And the mule?"

"He will not wander far from the basket, herr. We shall find him close
at hand."

"Then, forward!" said Dale; and the little party began the ascent almost
directly, their way being back up the snow slope down which, on the
previous day, Saxe had made so rapid a descent; and it was only now that
the boy realised how far he had come.

"It will be easy coming back, herr," said Melchior, as they stopped for
a few minutes to rest, "and you must not lose your balance this time."

"Only a little out of breath," replied Saxe; but as he spoke he could
not help giving a glance up at the huge pile of granite, ice and snow
towering high above his head.

Dale laughed.

"Well, Saxe," he said, "are you beginning to find out how high the
mountains are?"

Saxe nodded.

"Yes," he said; "they deceive you at a distance. Is this the highest?"

Dale laughed again.

"Well," he replied, "it is not quite the smallest. Say the medium. On
again, Melchior!"

"Yes, herr: let's get as high as we can while the morning is young and
the snow hard. We can take our time on the rock."

The guide was following the custom that seems to have come natural to
man and beast--that of zigzagging up a steep place; but instead of
making for the centre of the col, where it was lowest, he kept bearing
to the left--that is, he made the track three times the length of that
to the right, and he drew on toward where the slope grew steeper and
steeper.

The snow was far better to walk upon now, for the surface was well
frozen, and they had only to plant their feet in the deep steps the
guide made by driving the soles of his heavily nailed boots well into
the crust.

"Take care! take care!" he kept on saying to Saxe, who was in the
middle. "There is no danger, but a slip would send you down, and you
could not stop till you were at the bottom."

"I'll mind," said Saxe, as he stole a glance now and then up at the
steep white slope above him, or at that beneath, beyond which the pines
among which they had slept the past night now looked like h