fields, with a fire of brushwood lighting up
the faces of well-loved comrades; half hours passed in rock chimneys
wedged overhead by a boulder, or in snow-gullies beneath a bulge of ice,
when one man struggled above, out of sight, and the rest of the party
crouched below with what security it might waiting for the cheery cry,
"_Es geht. Vorwaerts_!"; the last scramble to the summit of a virgin
peak; the swift glissade down the final snow-slopes in the dusk of the
evening with the lights of the village twinkling below; his memories
tramped by him fast and always in the heart of them his friend's face
shone before his eyes. Chayne stood for a moment dazed and bewildered.
There rose up in his mind that first helpless question of distress,
"Why?" and while he stood, his face puzzled and greatly troubled, there
fell upon his ears from close at hand a simple message of sympathy
uttered in a whisper gentle but distinct:

"I am very sorry."

Chayne looked up. It was the overdressed girl of the Annemasse buffet,
the girl who had seemed to understand then, who seemed to understand now.
He raised his hat to her with a sense of gratitude. Then he followed the
guides and went up among the trees toward the Glacier des Nantillons.

CHAPTER III

THE FINDING OF JOHN LATTERY

The rescue party marched upward between the trees with the measured pace
of experience. Strength which would be needed above the snow-line was not
to be wasted on the lower slopes. But on the other hand no halts were
made; steadily the file of men turned to the right and to the left and
the zigzags of the forest path multiplied behind them. The zigzags
increased in length, the trees became sparse; the rescue party came out
upon the great plateau at the foot of the peaks called the Plan des
Aiguilles, and stopped at the mountain inn built upon its brow, just over
Chamonix. The evening had come, below them the mists were creeping along
the hillsides and blotting the valley out.

"We will stop here," said Michel Revailloud, as he stepped on to the
little platform of earth in front of the door. "If we start again at
midnight, we shall be on the glacier at daybreak. We cannot search the
Glacier des Nantillons in the dark."

Chayne agreed reluctantly. He would have liked to push on if only to lull
thought by the monotony of their march. Moreover during these last two
hours, some faint rushlight of hope had been kindled in his mind which
made all delay irks