“Oh, yes,” he answered absentmindedly, as if already his brain were busy with something else.  “What time did you fix for starting?  I didn’t hear?”

“I said to Joseph that it would do if he were on hand at half-past ten.  You can rest till nine o’clock.”

“Thank you.  And now, good night.  You’ve been very kind to-day.  Maybe I didn’t seem grateful, but I was, all the same; very, very grateful.”

“Nonsense!” said I.  “If you’re too tired to go down, shan’t I have my dinner with you?  We could have a table drawn up before the fire, and it would be quite jolly.”

He shook his head, a great weariness in his eyes.  “I’m too done up for society, even yours.  I’d rather you went down.  You will, won’t you?”

“Certainly, if you won’t have me.  Rest well.  I shall see that they send you up something decent.”

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m not as hungry as I was, somehow.  Good night, Man.”

“Good night, Boy.”

“Shake hands, will you?”

He pressed mine with all his little force, and shook it again and again, looking up in my face.  Then he bade me “Good night” once more, abruptly, and retreated into his room.

I went to my quarters at the other end of the passage, and was glad of the fire which had begun to roar fiercely in a small round stove, like a gnome with a pipe growing out of his head.  I had a sponge, changed, and descended to the salon, only to learn that the eating arrangements were carried on in another building, at some distance from the hotel.  Feeling like a belated insect of summer overtaken by winter cold, I darted down the path indicated, to the restaurant, where I found the Americans, already seated at just such a long table as I had pictured, and still in their knickerbockers.  There was, in the big room, a sprinkling of little tables under the closed windows, but they were not laid for a meal; and a chair being pulled out for me by a waiter, exactly opposite my two fellow-guests, I took it and sat down.

My first thought was to order something for the Little Pal, and to secure a promise that it should reach him hot, and soon.  I then devoted myself to my own dinner, which would have been more enjoyable had I had the Boy’s companionship.  I had worked slowly through soup and fish, and arrived at the inevitable veal, when I was addressed by one of the Americans—­him of the cleft chin and light curly hair, whose voice I had heard first in the salon.

“You came up by the mule path, didn’t you?”

I answered civilly in the affirmative, aware that all my “points” were being noted by both men.

“Must have been a stiff journey in this weather.”

“We came into the mist and snow just below the Col.”

“Your friend is done up, isn’t he?”

“Oh, he’s a very plucky young chap,” I replied, careful for the Boy’s reputation as a pilgrim; “but he’s a bit fagged, and will be better off dining in his own room.”