m the thermos bottle, "and please take anything else you wish while I
repack the basket. We are all waiting, you see, to go on."

The prospector paused to take the cup, then said: "I guess likely we won't
make the summit this trip. We've got to hustle to get down before it turns
soft."

"Oh, but we must make the summit," exclaimed Marcia, taking up her
alpenstock. "Why, we are all but there."

"How does it look ahead?" inquired Frederic, walking along the buttress.
"Heard you chopping ice."

"I was cutting steps across the tail end of a little glacier. It's a
gliddery place, but the going looks all right once you get past. Well,
likely you can make it," he added shrilly, "but you've got to be quick."

The life of the trail that sharpens a man's perceptives teaches him to
read individuality swiftly, and this Alaskan who, the first day out on a
long stampede, could have told the dominant trait of each husky in his
team, knew his party as well as the risk. Golf and tennis, added to a
naturally strong physique, had given the two sisters nerves of steel.
Marcia, who had visited some of the great glaciers in the north, possessed
the insight and coolness of a mountain explorer; and all the third woman
lacked in physical endurance was more than made up in courage. The man,
though enervated by over-indulgence, had the brute force, the animal
instinct of self-preservation, to carry him through. So presently, when
the buttress was passed, and the prospector uncoiled his rope, it was to
Mrs. Feversham he gave the other end, placing Morganstein next, with
Elizabeth at the center and Mrs. Weatherbee second. Once, twice, Banks
felt her stumble, a sinking weight on the line, but in the instant he
caught a twist in the slack and fixed his heels in the crust to turn, she
had, in each case, recovered and come steadily on. It was only when the
gliddery passage was made, the peril behind, that she sank down in
momentary collapse.

Banks stopped to unfold his pocket-cup and take out his flask. "You look
about done for," he said briskly. "My, yes, that little taste of glacier
was your limit. But you ain't the kind to back out. No, ma'am, all you
need is a little bracer to put you on your feet again, good as new."

"I never can go back," she said, and met his concerned look with wide and
luminous eyes. "Unless--I'm carried. Never in the world."

Morganstein forced a laugh. It had a frosty sound; his lips were blue.
"Excuse me," he resp