My eyes were almost well, but my hands had been badly frozen and were extremely painful, while I was so weak that I could hardly walk.  I spent the next two days recovering my strength, and on the third I found myself able to leave the hut for a short tramp.

I found snow-shoes and coloured glasses in the cabin; my overcoat was there, and I did not feel troubled in conscience when I appropriated a pair of warm fur mittens which the good priest had made from mink skins.  They had no fingers, and were admirably adapted to the weather.

I found one of the pistols in the hut, and in the pocket of my fur coat were a couple of cartridges which I had overlooked.  The rest I had fired away in my delirium.

The cabin, was situated in a valley, around which high hills clustered.  Strapping on the snow-shoes, I set to work to climb a lofty peak which stood at no great distance.

It took me a couple of hours to make the ascent, and when at last I sank down exhausted on the summit there was nothing in sight but a succession of new hills in every direction.  I seemed to be on the summit of the ridge which sloped away to east and west of me.  Hidden among the hills were little lakes.

There was no sign of life in all that desolate country.

My disappointment was overwhelming.  Surely the chateau was near.  I strode up and down upon the mountain-top, clenching my hands with rage.  It was four days since I had lost Jacqueline, and Leroux had contemptously left me to die in the snow.  He was so sure I could not follow and find him.

I began the descent again.  But it is easy to lose one’s way upon a mountain-peak, and the hills presented no clear definition to me.  Once in the valley I could locate the cabin again, but the sun had travelled far toward the west and no longer guided me accurately.

I must have turned off at a slight angle which took me some distance out of my course, for my progress was suddenly arrested by a mighty wall of rock, a sheer precipice that seemed to descend perpendicularly into the valley underneath.  Somewhere a torrent was roaring like a miniature Niagara.

I discovered my error and bent my footsteps along the summit of the precipice, and as I proceeded the noise of the torrent grew louder until the din was deafening.  I was treading now upon a smooth slope, like the glacis of a fortress.  I continued the descent, and all at once, at no great distance from me, I saw a tremendous waterfall, ice-sheeted, that tumbled down the face of the declivity and sent up a cloud of misty spray.

I stopped to stare in admiration.  Far below me the narrow valley had widened into the smooth, snow-coated surface of a lake.

And on a point of land projecting from the bottom of that mighty wall I saw the chateau!

It could have been nothing else.  It was a splendid building—­not larger than the house of a country gentleman, perhaps, and made of hewn logs; but the rude splendour of it against that icy, rocky background transfixed me with wonder.