below cried, "Gently! Gently," it seemed that the dead
man's mouth was speaking.

Chayne uttered a cry; then a deathly sickness overcame him. He dropped
the rope, staggered a little way off like a drunken man and sat down upon
the ice with his head between his hands.

Some while later a man came to him and said:

"We are ready, monsieur."

Chayne returned to the crevasse. Lattery's guide had been raised from the
crevasse. Both bodies had been wrapped in sacks and cords had been fixed
about their legs. The rescue party dragged the bodies down the glacier to
the path, and placing them upon doors taken from a chalet, carried them
down to Chamonix. On the way down Francois talked for a while to Michel
Revailloud, who in his turn fell back to where at the end of the
procession Chayne walked alone.

"Monsieur," he said, and Chayne looked at him with dull eyes like a
man dazed.

"There is something which Francois noticed, which he wished me to tell
you. Francois is a good lad. He wishes you to know that your friend died
at once--there was no sign of a movement. He lay in the bottom of the
crevasse in some snow which was quite smooth. The guide--he had kicked a
little with his feet in the snow--but your friend had died at once."

"Thank you," said Chayne, without the least emotion in his voice. But he
walked with uneven steps. At times he staggered like one overdone and
very tired. But once or twice he said, as though he were dimly aware that
he had his friend's reputation to defend:

"You see he didn't slip on the ice, Michel. You were quite wrong. It was
the avalanche. It was no fault of his."

"I was wrong," said Michel, and he took Chayne by the arm lest he should
fall; and these two men came long after the others into Chamonix.

CHAPTER IV

MR. JARVICE

The news of Lattery's death was telegraphed to England on the same
evening. It appeared the next morning under a conspicuous head-line in
the daily newspapers, and Mr. Sidney Jarvice read the item in the Pullman
car as he traveled from Brighton to his office in London. He removed his
big cigar from his fat red lips, and became absorbed in thought. The
train rushed past Hassocks and Three Bridges and East Croydon. Mr.
Jarvice never once looked at his newspaper again. The big cigar of which
the costliness was proclaimed by the gold band about its middle had long
since gone out, and for him the train came quite unexpectedly to a stop
at the ticket platf