Each of the dogs had the corner of a woman’s dress in its mouth, and drew her along.  She fondled their heads as she came up, and she came up through the snow with an accustomed tread.  Not so the large man with her, who was spent and winded.

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers!  I am of your country.  We seek two gentlemen crossing the Pass, who should have reached the Hospice this evening.”

“They have reached it, ma’amselle.”

“Thank Heaven!  O thank Heaven!”

“But, unhappily, they have gone on again.  We are setting forth to seek them even now.  We had to wait until the Tourmente passed.  It has been fearful up here.”

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers!  Let me go with you.  Let me go with you for the love of GOD!  One of those gentlemen is to be my husband.  I love him, O, so dearly.  O so dearly!  You see I am not faint, you see I am not tired.  I am born a peasant girl.  I will show you that I know well how to fasten myself to your ropes.  I will do it with my own hands.  I will swear to be brave and good.  But let me go with you, let me go with you!  If any mischance should have befallen him, my love would find him, when nothing else could.  On my knees, dear friends of travellers!  By the love your dear mothers had for your fathers!”

The good rough fellows were moved.  “After all,” they murmured to one another, “she speaks but the truth.  She knows the ways of the mountains.  See how marvellously she has come here.  But as to Monsieur there, ma’amselle?”

“Dear Mr. Joey,” said Marguerite, addressing him in his own tongue, “you will remain at the house, and wait for me; will you not?”

“If I know’d which o’ you two recommended it,” growled Joey Ladle, eyeing the two men with great indignation, “I’d fight you for sixpence, and give you half-a-crown towards your expenses.  No, Miss.  I’ll stick by you as long as there’s any sticking left in me, and I’ll die for you when I can’t do better.”

The state of the moon rendering it highly important that no time should be lost, and the dogs showing signs of great uneasiness, the two men quickly took their resolution.  The rope that yoked them together was exchanged for a longer one; the party were secured, Marguerite second, and the Cellarman last; and they set out for the Refuges.  The actual distance of those places was nothing:  the whole five, and the next Hospice to boot, being within two miles; but the ghastly way was whitened out and sheeted over.

They made no miss in reaching the Gallery where the two had taken shelter.  The second storm of wind and snow had so wildly swept over it since, that their tracks were gone.  But the dogs went to and fro with their noses down, and were confident.  The party stopping, however, at the further arch, where the second storm had been especially furious, and where the drift was deep, the dogs became troubled, and went about and about, in quest of a lost purpose.