ch he himself had seen in Kenyon's rooms. Fortunately however,
or so it seemed to him, Sylvia was engrossed in Michel's little book.

CHAPTER XXIII

MICHEL REVAILLOUD'S FUEHRBUCH

The book indeed was of far more interest to her than the portrait of any
mountaineer. It had a romance, a glamour of its own. It was just a
little note-book with blue-lined pages and an old dark-red soiled
leather cover which could fit into the breast pocket and never be
noticed there. But it went back to the early days of mountaineering when
even the passes were not all discovered and many of them were still
uncrossed, when mythical peaks were still gravely allotted their
positions and approximate heights in the maps; and when the easy
expedition of the young lady of to-day was the difficult achievement of
the explorer. It was to the early part of the book to which she turned.
Here she found first ascents of which she had read with her heart in her
mouth, ascents since made famous, simply recorded in the handwriting of
the men who had accomplished them--the dates, the hours of starting and
returning, a word or two perhaps about the condition of the snow, a warm
tribute to Michel Revailloud and the signatures. The same names recurred
year after year, and often the same hand recorded year after year
attempts on one particular pinnacle, until at the last, perhaps after
fifteen or sixteen failures, weather and snow and the determination of
the climbers conspired together, and the top was reached.

"Those were the grand days," cried Sylvia. "Michel, you must be proud of
this book."

"I value it very much, madame," he said, smiling at her enthusiasm.
Michel was a human person; and to have a young girl with a lovely face
looking at him out of her great eyes in admiration, and speaking almost
in a voice of awe, was flattery of a soothing kind. "Yes, many have
offered to buy it from me at a great price--Americans and others. But I
would not part with it. It is me. And when I am inclined to grumble, as
old people will, and to complain that my bones ache too sorely, I have
only to turn over the pages of that book to understand that I have no
excuse to grumble. For I have the proof there that my life has been very
good to live. No, I would not part with that little book."

Sylvia turned over the pages slowly, naming now this mountain, now that,
and putting a question from time to time as to some point in a climb
which she remembered to have