eyes
alert. He had noticed that Chayne was growing importunate, and that his
persistence was becoming troublesome to Sylvia. She gave him a less warm
welcome each time that he came to the house. She made plans to prevent
herself being left alone with him, and if by chance the plans failed she
listened rather than talked and listened almost with an air of boredom.

"Come as often as you please!" consequently said Garratt Skinner from his
hammock. "And now let us talk of something else."

He talked of nothing for a while. But it was plain that he had a subject
in his thoughts. For twice he turned to Chayne and was on the point of
speaking; but each time he thought silence the better part and lay back
again. Chayne waited and at last the subject was broached, but in a
queer, hesitating, diffident way, as though Garratt Skinner spoke rather
under a compulsion of which he disapproved.

"Tell me!" he said. "I am rather interested. A craze, an infatuation
which so masters people must be interesting even to the stay-at-homes
like myself. But I am wrong to call it a craze. From merely reading books
I think it a passion which is easily intelligible. You are wondering what
I am talking about. My daughter tells me that you are a famous climber.
The Aiguille d'Argentiere, I suppose, up which you were kind enough to
accompany her, is not a very difficult mountain."

"It depends upon the day," said Chayne, "and the state of the snow."

"Yes, that is what I have gathered from the books. Every mountain may
become dangerous."

"Yes."

"Each mountain," said Garratt Skinner, thoughtfully, "may reward its
conquerors with death"; and for a little while he lay looking up to the
green branches interlaced above his head. "Thus each mountain on the
brightest day holds in its recesses mystery, and also death."

There had come a change already in the manner of the two men. They found
themselves upon neutral ground. Their faces relaxed from wariness; they
were no longer upon their guard. It seemed that an actual comradeship had
sprung up between them.

"There is a mountain called the Grepon," said Skinner. "I have seen
pictures of it--a strange and rather attractive pinnacle, with its
knife-like slabs of rock, set on end one above the other--black rock
splashed with red--and the overhanging boulder on the top. Have you
climbed it?"

"Yes."

"There is a crack, I believe--a good place to get you into training."

Chayne laughed with th