ckly upon him. Chayne hurried forward, plying the pick of his ax as
never in his life had he plied it. Had the guide come upon the actual
place where the accident took place, he asked himself? But before he
reached the spot, his pace slackened, and he stood still. He had no
longer any doubt. His friend and his friend's guide were not lying upon
any ledge of the rocks of the Aiguille de Blaitiere; they were not
waiting for any succor.

On the glacier, a broad track, littered with blocks of ice, stretched
upward in a straight line from the upper lip of the crevasse to the great
ice-fall on the sky-line where the huge slabs and pinnacles of ice,
twisted into monstrous shapes, like a sea suddenly frozen when a tempest
was at its height, stood marshaled in serried rows. They stood waiting
upon the sun. One of them, melted at the base, had crashed down the
slope, bursting into huge fragments as it fell, and cleaving a groove
even in that hard glacier.

Chayne went forward and stopped at the guide's side on the lower edge
of the crevasse. Beyond the chasm the ice rose in a blue straight
wall for some three feet, and the upper edge was all crushed and
battered; and then the track of the falling serac ended. It had
poured into the crevasse.

The guide pointed to the left of the track.

"Do you see, monsieur? Those steps which come downward across the glacier
and stop exactly where the track meets them? They do not go on, on the
other side of the track, monsieur."

Chayne saw clearly enough. The two men had been descending the glacier in
the afternoon, the avalanche had fallen and swept them down. He dropped
upon his knees and peered into the crevasse. The walls of the chasm
descended smooth and precipitous, changing in gradual shades and color
from pale transparent green to the darkest blue, until all color was lost
in darkness. He bent his head and shouted into the depths:

"Lattery! Lattery!"

And only his voice came back to him, cavernous and hollow. He shouted
again, and then he heard Michel Revailloud saying solemnly behind him:

"Yes, they are here."

Suddenly Chayne turned round, moved by a fierce throb of anger.

"It's not true, you see," he cried. "He didn't slip out of his steps and
drag his guide down with him. You were wrong, Michel."

Michel was standing with his hat in his hand.

"Yes, monsieur, I was quite wrong," he said, gently. He turned to a big
and strong man:

"Francois, will you put on the r