w would any alarm at their disappearance be
awakened either at Chamonix or at Courmayeur. It would need a second
night before help reached them--so Garratt Skinner had planned it out.
There could be but one end to it. Walter Hine would die. There was a risk
that he himself might suffer the same fate--he was not blind to it. He
had taken the risk knowingly, and with a certain indifference. It was the
best plan, since, if he escaped alive, suspicion could not fall on him.
Thus he argued, as he smoked his pipe with his back to the rock and
waited for the morning.

At one o'clock Walter Hine began to ramble. He took Garratt Skinner and
Pierre Delouvain for Captain Barstow and Archie Parminter, and complained
that it was ridiculous to sit up playing poker on so cold a night; and
while in his delirium he rambled and moaned, the morning began to break.
But with the morning came a wind from the north, whirling the snow like
smoke about the mountain-tops, and bitingly cold. Garratt Skinner with
great difficulty stood up, slowly and with pain stretched himself to his
full height, slapped his thighs, stamped with his feet, and then looked
for a long while at his victim, without remorse, and without
satisfaction. He stooped and sought to lift him. But Hine was too stiff
and numbed with the cold to be able to move. In a little while Pierre
Delouvain, who had fallen asleep, woke up. The day was upon them now,
cold and lowering.

"We must wait for the sun," said Garratt Skinner. "Until that has risen
and thawed us it will not be safe to move."

Pierre Delouvain looked about him, worked the stiffened muscles of his
limbs and groaned.

"There will be little sun to-day," he said. "We shall all die here."

Garratt Skinner sat down again and waited. The sun rose over the rocks
of Mont Maudit, but weak, and yellow as a guinea. Garratt Skinner then
tied his coat to his ice-ax, and standing out upon a rock waved it this
way and that.

"No one will see it," whimpered Pierre; and indeed Garratt Skinner would
never have waved that signal had he not thought the same.

"Perhaps--one never knows," he said. "We must take all precautions, for
the day looks bad."

The sunlight, indeed, only stayed upon the mountain-side long enough to
tantalize them with vain hopes of warmth. Gray clouds swept up low over
the crest of Mont Blanc and blotted it out. The wind moaned wildly
along the slopes. The day frowned upon them sullen and cold with a sky