fore their eyes
all night. It is no sign of disaster." For a moment he was silent, and
then he added timidly: "If you look for a sign, monsieur, there is a
better one."

Chayne turned toward Michel in the darkness rather quickly.

"As we set out from the hotel," Michel continued, "there was a young girl
upon the steps with a very sweet and gentle face. She spoke to you,
monsieur. No doubt she told you that her prayers would be with you
to-night."

"No, Michel," Chayne replied, and though the darkness hid his face,
Michel knew that he smiled. "She did not promise me her prayers. She
simply said: 'I am sorry.'"

Michel Revailloud was silent for a little while, and when he spoke again,
he spoke very wistfully. One might almost have said that there was a note
of envy in his voice.

"Well, that is still something, monsieur. You are very lonely to-night,
is it not so? You came back here after many years, eager with hopes and
plans and not thinking at all of disappointments. And the disappointments
have come, and the hopes are all fallen. Is not that so, too? Well, it is
something, monsieur--I, who am lonely too, and an old man besides, so
that I cannot mend my loneliness, I tell you--it is something that there
is a young girl down there with a sweet and gentle face who is sorry for
you, who perhaps is looking up from among those lights to where we stand
in the darkness at this moment."

But it seemed that Chayne did not hear, or, if he heard, that he paid no
heed. And Michel, knocking the tobacco from his pipe, said:

"You will do well to sleep. We may have a long day before us"; and he
walked away to the guides' quarters.

But Chayne could not sleep; hope and doubt fought too strongly within
him, wrestling for the life of his friend. At twelve o'clock Michel
knocked upon his door. Chayne got up from his bed at once, drew on his
boots, and breakfasted. At half past the rescue party set out, following
a rough path through a wilderness of boulders by the light of a lantern.
It was still dark when they came to the edge of the glacier, and they sat
down and waited. In a little while the sky broke in the East, a twilight
dimly revealed the hills, Michel blew out the lantern, the blurred
figures of the guides took shape and outline, and silently the morning
dawned upon the world.

The guides moved on to the glacier and spread over it, ascending as
they searched.

"You see, monsieur, there is very little snow this year,