Michel Revailloud.

"There is very little snow this year," he said. "The glaciers are
uncovered as I have never seen them in all my life. Everywhere it is ice,
ice, ice. Monsieur Lattery had only one guide with him and he was not so
sure on ice. I am afraid, monsieur, that he slipped out of his steps on
the Glacier des Nantillons."

"And dragged his guide with him?" exclaimed Chayne. His heart rather than
his judgment protested against the argument. It seemed to him disloyal to
believe it. A man should not slip from his steps on the Glacier des
Nantillons. He turned toward the door.

"Very well," he said. "Send three guides up the Mer de Glace. We will go
up to the Glacier des Nantillons."

He went up to his room, fetched his ice-ax and a new club-rope with the
twist of red in its strands, and came down again. The rumor of an
accident had spread. A throng of tourists stood about the door and
surrounded the group of guides, plying them with questions. One or two
asked Chayne as he came out on what peak the accident had happened. He
did not reply. He turned to Michel Revailloud and forgetful for the
moment that he was in Chamonix, he uttered the word so familiar in the
High Alps, so welcome in its sound.

"_Vorwaerts_, Michel," he said, and the word was the Open Sesame to a
chamber which he would gladly have kept locked. There was work to do
now; there would be time afterward to remember--too long a time. But in
spite of himself his recollections rushed tumultuously upon him. Up to
these last four years, on some day in each July his friend and he had
been wont to foregather at some village in the Alps, Lattery coming from
a Government Office in Whitehall, Chayne now from some garrison town in
England, now from Malta or from Alexandria, and sometimes from a still
farther dependency. Usually they had climbed together for six weeks,
although there were red-letter years when the six weeks were extended to
eight, six weeks during which they lived for the most part on the high
level of the glaciers, sleeping in huts, or mountain inns, or beneath
the stars, and coming down only for a few hours now and then into the
valley towns. _Vorwaerts_! The months of their comradeship seemed to him
epitomized in the word. The joy and inspiration of many a hard climb
came back, made bitter with regret for things very pleasant and now done
with forever. Nights on some high ledge, sheltered with rocks and set in
the pale glimmer of snow-