his eyes. When this happened, nothing was ever more apparent
than that, for both of them, a momentous event had occurred.

She was almost completely silent, and as for him, his responses to the
general conversation which McVay kept attempting to set up, were so
entirely mechanical that he was scarcely aware of them himself.

It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day.

"And _this_ is our Christmas dinner," observed McVay regretfully.

"Oh, no," returned the girl, "this is luncheon. I'll cook your dinner.
You'll see."

There was a pause. Geoffrey looked at McVay. The moment for
disillusioning her had manifestly come. Wherever they might next meet it
would not be at his dinner table. A hateful vision of a criminal court
rose before him.

"Miss McVay," he said gravely, indifferent to the signals of warning
which the other man was directing toward him; "we shall not be here at
dinner. Your brother will tell you my reasons for wishing to start down
the mountain."

"Now?"

"At once."

She coloured slowly and deeply,--the only evidence of anger. "I do not
need any other reason than your wish that we should go," she said,
rising. "I should thank you for having borne with us so long."

"Upon my word, Holland, it is madness to start as late as this," said
McVay. "It will be dark in an hour."

She turned on her brother quickly: "Please say no more about the matter,
Billy," she said. "We will start at once."

"You won't start if it means certainly freezing to death," he
remonstrated.

She flashed a glance at Geoffrey, who had also risen and was trying to
compel the truth from McVay by a stern, steady glance.

"I _would_," she answered and shut the door behind her.

McVay sprang up and was about to follow her when Geoffrey stopped him.
"One moment," he said, "you are quite right. It is too late to start
to-night. We must stay here until to-morrow. But if we are to spend a
night here without your sister's being told--"

"My dear Holland, think of her position, if we did tell her!"

"I grant that the information had better be withheld until just as we
are starting, but in that case I must--"

"I know what you are going to ask,--my word of honour not to escape. I
give it, I give it willingly."

"I'm not going to ask for anything at all," said Geoffrey. "I'm going to
tell you one or two things, and I advise you to pay attention. We won't
have any nonsense at all. Remember I am armed, and I am a