talk it over. Each tries to be the bolder
man."

"But is there going to be any difficulty?" James enquired, surveying
the waste through his eyeglass. "I don't see why there should be."

"You never know," Urquhart said curtly; but presently he was more
confidential. "Don't tell that ass Lingen; but it might be quite
difficult to get off this place."

James stared about him. "You know best. But is it harder to get off
than on?"

"Of course it is, my dear chap," said Urquhart, quite in his old vein
of good-tempered scorn. "We are going up on the north side, where the
snow is as hard as a brick."

"Ah," said James, "now I see. And we go down on the south, where it's
as soft--"

"Where it may be as soft as a bran-mash. Or blown over into cornices."

James saw, or said that he did. In his private mind he judged Urquhart
of trying to intimidate him. The vice of the expert! But he noticed
that the guide had a coil of rope, and that Urquhart carried a shovel.

It was easy going until near noon, with no snow to speak about. They
climbed a series of ridges, like frozen waves; but each was higher
than the last, and took them closer to the clouds. When they lunched
under the shelter of some tumbled rocks a drifting rain blew across
the desolation.

"Jolly!" said James, but quite happily. Lingen shivered.

"My dear man," said Urquhart, "just you wait. I'll surprise you in a
quarter of an hour's time." He spoke in his old way, as hectoring whom
he tolerated. James noticed it, and was amused. He hadn't yet had time
to be angry with this rascal; and now he began to doubt whether he
should. After all, he had gained so very much more than he had lost.
Honour? Oh, that be jiggered. Something too much of his own honour.
Why, it was through Urquhart's attack upon Lucy that he had found out
what Lucy was. Urquhart, at this time, was marching rather in front of
him: James looked him over. A hardy, impudent rogue, no doubt--with
that square, small head on him, that jutting chin--and his pair of
blue eyes which would look through any woman born and burn her heart
to water. Yes, and so he had had Lucy's heart--as water to be poured
over his feet. By Heaven, when he thought of it, he, James Adolphus,
had been the greater rogue: to play the Grand Turk; to hoard that
lovely, quivering creature in his still seraglio; to turn the key, and
leave her there! And Jimmy Urquhart got in by the window. Of course
he did. He was not an imaginative