as it had fallen, without a track. My knees shook under me, and I
clutched my stick for support, and everything grew black before me: and
presently I fell on my knees and crawled and peered over the edge. But
there was nothing to be seen, only where the wall slants sharp down for
a little space in one spot the snow was brushed away as if something had
struck there, and the black, smooth rock showed clean, cutting off the
sight from the glacier a thousand feet down."

The old man's breast heaved. It was evidently a painful narrative, but
he kept on.

"I sat down in the snow and thought; for I could not think at once. Cnut
had not wished to murder, or else he had flung the Englishman from the
narrow ledge with one blow of his strong arm. He had waited until they
had stood on the Devil's Seat, and then he had thrown off his pack and
faced him, man to man. The Englishman was strong and active, taller and
heavier than Cnut. He had Harald's name, but he had not Harald's heart
nor blood, and Cnut had carried him in his arms over the cliff, with his
false heart like water in his body.

"I sat there all day and into the night; for I knew that he would betray
no one more. I sorrowed for Cnut, for he was my very son. And after a
time I would have gone back to her, but I thought of her at home waiting
and watching for me with a letter, and I could not; and then I wept, and
I wished that I were Cnut, for I knew that he had had one moment of joy
when he took the Englishman in his arms. And then I took the scattered
things from the snow and threw them over the cliff; for I would not let
it be known that Cnut had flung the Englishman over. It would be talked
about over the mountain, and Cnut would be thought a murderer by those
who did not know, and some would say he had done it foully; and so
I went on over the mountain, and told it there that Cnut and the
Englishman had gone over the cliff together in the snow on their way,
and it was thought that a slip of snow had carried them. And I came back
and told her only that no letter had come."

He was silent so long that I thought he had ended; but presently, in a
voice so low that it was just like a whisper, he added: "I thought she
would forget, but she has not, and every fortnight she begins to sew her
dress and I go over the mountains to give her peace; for each time she
draws nearer to the end, and wears away more and more; and some day the
thin blade will snap."

"The thin bla