Michel spoke with so much certainty that even in the face of his telegram, in the face of the story which Jules had told, hope sprang up within Chayne’s heart.

“Then he may be still up there on some ledge.  He would surely not have slipped on the Glacier des Nantillons.”

That hope, however, was not shared by Michel Revailloud.

“There is very little snow this year,” he said.  “The glaciers are uncovered as I have never seen them in all my life.  Everywhere it is ice, ice, ice.  Monsieur Lattery had only one guide with him and he was not so sure on ice.  I am afraid, monsieur, that he slipped out of his steps on the Glacier des Nantillons.”

“And dragged his guide with him?” exclaimed Chayne.  His heart rather than his judgment protested against the argument.  It seemed to him disloyal to believe it.  A man should not slip from his steps on the Glacier des Nantillons.  He turned toward the door.

“Very well,” he said.  “Send three guides up the Mer de Glace.  We will go up to the Glacier des Nantillons.”

He went up to his room, fetched his ice-ax and a new club-rope with the twist of red in its strands, and came down again.  The rumor of an accident had spread.  A throng of tourists stood about the door and surrounded the group of guides, plying them with questions.  One or two asked Chayne as he came out on what peak the accident had happened.  He did not reply.  He turned to Michel Revailloud and forgetful for the moment that he was in Chamonix, he uttered the word so familiar in the High Alps, so welcome in its sound.

“Vorwaerts, Michel,” he said, and the word was the Open Sesame to a chamber which he would gladly have kept locked.  There was work to do now; there would be time afterward to remember—­too long a time.  But in spite of himself his recollections rushed tumultuously upon him.  Up to these last four years, on some day in each July his friend and he had been wont to foregather at some village in the Alps, Lattery coming from a Government Office in Whitehall, Chayne now from some garrison town in England, now from Malta or from Alexandria, and sometimes from a still farther dependency.  Usually they had climbed together for six weeks, although there were red-letter years when the six weeks were extended to eight, six weeks during which they lived for the most part on the high level of the glaciers, sleeping in huts, or mountain inns, or beneath the stars, and coming down only for a few hours now and then into the valley towns. Vorwaerts!  The months of their comradeship seemed to him epitomized in the word.  The joy and inspiration of many a hard climb came back, made bitter with regret for things very pleasant and now done with forever.  Nights on some high ledge, sheltered with rocks and set in the pale glimmer of snow-fields, with a fire of brushwood lighting up the faces of well-loved comrades; half hours passed in rock chimneys wedged overhead by a