however, forgot Sylvia Thesiger. As the train moved on to Le
Fayet he was thinking only of the plans which he had made, of the new
expeditions which were to be undertaken, of his friend John Lattery and
his guide Michel Revailloud who would be waiting for him upon the
platform of Chamonix. He had seen neither of them for four years. The
electric train carried the travelers up from Le Fayet. The snow-ridges
and peaks came into view; the dirt-strewn Glacier des Bossons shot out a
tongue of blue ice almost to the edge of the railway track, and a few
minutes afterward the train stopped at the platform of Chamonix.

Chayne jumped down from his carriage and at once suffered the first of
his disappointments. Michel Revailloud was on the platform to meet
him, but it was a Michel Revailloud whom he hardly knew, a Michel
Revailloud grown very old. Revailloud was only fifty-two years of age,
but during Chayne's absence the hardships of his life had taken their
toll of his vigor remorselessly. Instead of the upright, active figure
which Chayne so well remembered, he saw in front of him a little man
with bowed shoulders, red-rimmed eyes, and a withered face seamed with
tiny wrinkles.

At this moment, however, Michel's pleasure at once more seeing his old
patron gave to him at all events some look of his former alertness, and
as the two men shook hands he cried:

"Monsieur, but I am glad to see you! You have been too long away from
Chamonix. But you have not changed. No, you have not changed."

In his voice there was without doubt a note of wistfulness. "I would I
could say as much for myself." That regret was as audible to Chayne as
though it had been uttered. But he closed his ears to it. He began to
talk eagerly of his plans. There were familiar peaks to be climbed again
and some new expeditions to be attempted.

"I thought we might try a new route up the Aiguille sans Nom," he
suggested, and Michel assented but slowly, without the old heartiness and
without that light in his face which the suggestion of something new used
always to kindle. But again Chayne shut his ears.

"I was very lucky to find you here," he went on cheerily. "I wrote so
late that I hardly hoped for it."

Michel replied with some embarrassment:

"I do not climb with every one, monsieur. I hoped perhaps that one of my
old patrons would want me. So I waited."

Chayne looked round the platform for his friend.

"And Monsieur Lattery?" he asked.

The g