hel Croz, than live to be a goatherd."

He seemed to pull himself up with an effort. "That way--to your
left--you cannot miss the path. _Addio, signorina_," and he lifted his
hat with the inborn grace of the peasantry of Southern Europe.

Helen was hoping that he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio.
She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was
becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he
often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables,
she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about
Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending
the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic
accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of
Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment's
thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto
impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was still living, a keen
Alpinist.

She could not refrain from asking Stampa one question, though she
imagined that he was now in a hurry to take the damaged carriage back
to St. Moritz. "Michel Croz was a brave man," she said. "Did you know
him well?"

"I worshiped him, _fraeulein_," was the reverent answer. "May I receive
pardon in my last hour, but I took him for an evil spirit on the day
of his death! I was with Jean Antoine Carrel in Signor Giordano's
party. We started from Breuil, Croz and his voyageurs from Zermatt.
We failed; he succeeded. When we saw him and his Englishmen on the
summit, we believed they were devils, because they yelled in triumph,
and started an avalanche of stones to announce their victory. Three
days later, Carrel and I, with two men from Breuil, tried again. We
gained the top that time, and passed the place where Croz was knocked
over by the English milord and the others who fell with him. I saw
three bodies on the glacier four thousand feet below,--a fine
burial-ground, better than that up there."

He looked back at the pines which now hid the cemetery wall from
sight. Then, with another courteous sweep of his hat, he walked away,
covering the ground rapidly despite his twisted leg.

If Helen had been better trained as a woman journalist, she would have
regarded this meeting with Stampa as an incident of much value. Long
experience of the lights and shades of life might have rendered her
less sensitive. As it was, the man's personality appealed to he