So Tom walked on in high spirits, feeling well equipped for the coming struggle, and fearing little the peril which might lie before him.  In the pride of his manhood’s strength, he laughed at the thought of danger.  He had faced too many perils of late to begin to turn coward now.  So long as he felt that he was leading these followers away from the other pass to be taken by his comrade, he cared for nothing else—­not even for the discovery he once made that they were three in number, though Lord Claud had calculated that they would only be two.

Sometimes Tom noted that his guide would look back, and more than once he fancied that he detected him signalling to those below.  This aroused in his mind a doubt of the fellow’s fidelity; but there was nothing to be done now.  They were in the midst of trackless snow plains, ice slopes, and precipices.  He must perforce trust to the leading of the guide, albeit, if he had been tampered with by those in pursuit, things might look ugly when it came to the moment of attack.

As the hours wore away, Tom began to wish that the situation might declare itself.  The drear wildness of the mountain height oppressed him with a sense of personal insignificance which was rather overwhelming.  The great white mountains seemed to stare down upon him as though pitilessly indifferent to his fate.  How could they care what became of one solitary son of earth?  Did they not stand fast for ever more, from century to century?  It was a thought that he found oppressive and rather terrible.

At one point the guide insisted upon leaving what looked like the better track, and led him round a sort of shoulder of piled up snow and rock, where walking was very laborious.  Tom began to feel the need of food, and would have stopped and opened his wallet; but the man shook his head and gesticulated, and seemed to urge him onwards at some speed.  Tom supposed he must obey, as the man pointed warningly to the rocks above, as though to hint that danger might be expected from them.

So on they trudged, Tom feeling a slight unaccustomed giddiness in the head, as many persons do who first try walking for some hours in the glare of sun and snow and at a high altitude.  Then the path suddenly turned again under the frowning wall of rock, which rose black and stern through the covering of snow.  The guide disappeared round the angle of the path; Tom followed with quick steps, and the next moment was almost felled to the earth by the terrific blow of a cudgel upon his head.

Almost, but not quite.  He had been on his guard.  He felt that the crisis was coming, and he was certain that the guide had betrayed him at this pre-arranged spot into the hands of his enemies.  In one second Tom’s rapier was out (he had carried that in spite of the hindrance it had sometimes been to him), and although he was half-blinded and half-stunned by the force of the blow received, he lunged fiercely forward, and heard a yell of pain which told him that his blade had found its billet.