“I expect he’ll be all right to-morrow.  Are you going to try and get to Chambery, or will you return to Aix by train?”

“We shall push on, unless we’re snowed in,” I said.

“That’s our plan, too.  I dare say we shall be starting about the same time, and if so, if you don’t mind, we might join forces.”

“Now, what is this chap’s game?” I asked myself.  “He isn’t drawing me out for nothing; and as these two are together they have no need of companionship.  There’s some special reason why they want to join us.”

Taking this for granted, the one reason which occurred to me as probable, was a previous acquaintance with the Boy, which they wished to keep up, and he did not wish to acknowledge.  I determined that he should not be thus entrapped, through me.

“That would be very pleasant, no doubt,” I replied; “but you had better not wait for us.  Our time of starting is uncertain.”

Though I spoke with perfect civility, it must have been clear to them that I preferred not to have my party enlarged by strangers, and I rather regretted the necessity for this ungraciousness, as the men were gentlemen, and I usually got on excellently with Americans.

“Oh, very well,” returned the handsomer of the two, looking slightly offended.  “We shall meet on the way down, perhaps.  By-the-by, if I’m not mistaken, your young friend is a compatriot of ours.  He’s American, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I believe I’ve met him in New York, though it was so dark I couldn’t be sure.  Do you object to telling me his name?”

“I’m afraid I do object,” I answered, stiffly this time.  “You must satisfy yourself as to his identity, if it interests you, when you see each other to-morrow.”

Of all that remained of dinner, I can only say the words which Hamlet spoke in dying; for indeed, “the rest was silence.”

Directly the meal was over, I hurried back to the hotel, like a rabbit to its warren; smoked a pipe before a roaring fire in my bedroom, and wondered if the Little Pal were wandering “down the uncompanioned way” of dreamland.  As for me, I never got as far as that land.  I fell over a precipice without a bottom, before my head had found a nest in the soft pillow, and knew nothing more until suddenly I started awake with the impression that someone had called.

“What is it, Boy?  Do you want me?” I heard myself asking sharply, as my eyes opened.

It seemed that I had not been asleep for ten minutes, but to my surprise an exquisite, rosy light filled the room.  Well-nigh before I knew whether I were sleeping or waking, I was out of bed and at the window.

It was the light of sunrise, shining over a billowy white world, for the fog had been rent asunder, and through its torn, woolly folds, I caught an unforgettable glimpse of glory.  The sky was a rippling lake of red-gold fire, whose reflection turned a hundred snow-clad mountain-crests to blazing helmets for Titans.  Above the majestic ranks rose their leader, towering head and shoulders over all.  “Mont Blanc!” I had just time to say to myself in awed admiration, when the snow-fog was knit together again, only a jagged line of fading gold showing the stitches.