gered back into his seat; and the kindly
innkeeper ran upstairs to see what had happened to his poor young
guest.

Mrs. Knollys had recovered from the first shock by this time, but the
truth could no longer be withheld. The innkeeper could but nod his
head sadly, when she told him that to recover her Charles was
hopeless. All the guides said the same thing. The poor girl's husband
had vanished from the world as utterly as if his body had been burned
to ashes and scattered in the pathway of the winds. Charles Knollys
was gone, utterly gone; no more to be met with by his girl-wife, save
as spirit to spirit, soul to soul, in ultramundane place. The
fair-haired young Englishman lived but in her memory, as his soul, if
still existent, lived in places indeterminate, unknowable to Doctor
Zimmermann and his compeers. Slowly Mrs. Knollys acquired the belief
that she was never to see her Charles again. Then, at last, she
resolved to go--to go home. Her strength now gave way; and when her
aunt left she had with her but the ghost of Mrs. Knollys--a broken
figure, drooping in the carriage, veiled in black. The innkeeper and
all the guides stood bare-headed, silent, about the door, as the
carriage drove off, bearing the bereaved widow back to England.

III.

When the Herr Doctor had heard the innkeeper's answer, he sat for some
time with his hands planted on his knees, looking through his
spectacles at the opposite wall. Then he lifted one hand and struck
his brow impatiently. It was his way, when a chemical reaction had
come out wrong.

"Triple blockhead!" said he; "triple blockhead, thou art so bad as
Spluethner." No self-condemnation could have been worse to him than
this. Thinking again of Mrs. Knollys, he gave one deep, gruff sob.
Then he took his hat, and going out, wandered by the shore of the
glacier in the night, repeating to himself the Englishwoman's words:
"_They said that they hoped he could be recovered._" Zimmermann came
to the tent where he kept his instruments, and stood there, looking at
the sea of ice. He went to his measuring pegs, two rods of iron: one
sunk deep and frozen in the glacier, the other drilled into a rock on
the shore. "Triple blockhead!" said he again, "thou art worse than
Spluethner. The Spluethner said the glacier did not move; thou, thou
knowest that it does." He sighted from his rods to the mountain
opposite. There was a slight and all but imperceptible change of