that I presently shrugged my
shoulders again and desisted.

I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. Strange to
say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than I had hoped.
I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous antagonists; but
Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of suspicion as an egg of
meat. He rode a little behind me, with his gun across his saddlebow, and
a pistol near his hand; and at the slightest pause on my part, or if I
turned to look at him, he muttered his constant 'Forward, Monsieur!'
in a tone which warned me that his finger was on the trigger. At such a
distance he could not miss; and I saw nothing for it but to go on meekly
before him to the Roca Blanca--and my fate.

What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley
and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders,
over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In
front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing
trunks. The snow line lay less than half a mile away on either hand; and
crowning all--at the end of the pass, as it seemed to the eye--rose the
pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six thousand feet into
the blue of heaven. Such a scene so suddenly disclosed, was enough to
drive the sense of danger from my mind; and for a moment I reined in my
horse. But 'Forward, Monsieur!' came the grating order. I fell to earth
again, and went on. What was to be done?

I was at my wits' end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride
abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication
at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of
two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast
climbing the pass. We had left the others an hour--nearly two. The sun
was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.

If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would
fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a
bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders and with snow lying
here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and
scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away
to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across the
path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen, sharp air cut our
cheeks and warned me that we were approaching