They did not seem to present any
great difficulty. Helen found herself speculating on the remarkable
light effects that made these notches black in a gray-green wall.

"Right foot first," said Spencer quietly. "When that is firmly fixed,
throw all your weight on it, and bring the left down. Then the right
again. Hold the pick breast high."

"So!" cried Karl appreciatively, watching her first successful effort.

As Spencer was lowering himself into the crevasse, he heard something
that set his nimble wits agog. Stampa, the valiant and light hearted
Stampa, the genial companion who had laughed and jested even when they
were crossing an ice slope on the giant Monte della Disgrazia,--a
traverse of precarious clinging, where a slip meant death a thousand
feet below,--was muttering strangely at Bower.

"_Schwein-hund!_" he was saying, "if any evil befalls the _fraeulein_,
I shall drive my ax between your shoulder blades."

There was no reply. Spencer was sure he was not mistaken. Though the
guide spoke German, he knew enough of that language to understand this
comparatively simple sentence. Quite as amazing as Stampa's threat was
Bower's silent acceptance of it. He began to piece together some
fleeting impressions of the curious wrangle between the two outside
the hut. He recalled Bower's extraordinary change of tone when told
that a man named Christian Stampa had followed him from Maloja.

Helen was just taking another confident step forward and down,
balancing herself with graceful assurance. Spencer had a few seconds
in which to steal a backward glance, and a flash of lightning happened
to glimmer on Bower's features. The American was not given to fanciful
imaginings; but during many a wild hour in the Far West he had seen
the baleful frown of murder on a man's face too often not to recognize
it now in this snow scourged cleft of a mighty Alpine glacier. Yet he
was helpless. He could neither speak nor act on a mere opinion. He
could only watch, and be on his guard. From that moment he tried to
observe every movement not only of Helen but of Bower.

The members of the party were roped at intervals of twenty feet.
Allowing for the depth of the crevasse, the amount of rope taken up in
their hands ready to be served out as occasion required, and the
inclination of Barth's line of descent, the latter ought to be
notching the opposing wall before Stampa quitted the surface of the
glacier. Though Spencer could not see Sta