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looked at one another, and they both thought of the girl lying in the hut.

"What's to be done?" asked Wainford, turning to his companion and breathing hard.

Rainer looked up and down the crevasse for a gleam of hope. Above it terminated in icy rocks impassable to the feet of man, and below the cliffs fell sheer down for four hundred feet.

"Nothing," he remarked; "die like men."

Wainford turned away.

"Can this be the end?" he asked.

Rainer only shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply.

"Are we in imminent danger? Can't they keep us supplied with food till they can rig up some sort of bridge?"

He spoke with the air of a man trying to impose upon himself. Rainer looked at him as if calculating his resisting power.

"Would you like to know the truth?" he asked.

"What truth?" inquired Wainford, quickly. Then he added in a sharp rasping tone, "What is it? Out with it."

For answer Rainer took him by the arm and pointed to the field of snow that, like the angel of destruction, hung with outspread wings above, as if gathering to spring.

"Do you see that mass of snow up there?" he asked, quietly.

The other started.

"You don't think, do you," he began, but he could not speak the words.

"Do I think it will fall?" remarked Rainer, calmly. "Well! it's moving towards us. How long it will hold up God only knows."

"Lend me your glass," said Wainford, and he looked long and anxiously. His mouth worked

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"You are a man," he said. Wainford seemed rebuked.

"How long do you think it will take that thing to get down to us?" he asked.

"I don't know. It may take a couple of days-or it may fall at any moment."

"You talk very coolly about it," said Wainford, resentfully.

"Have you not all your life expected to die some time?”

"Yes, but not like this. It's frightful to have to sit and watch that great white terror sliding slowly down upon us."

"Don't look at it."

"I can't help seeing it. I see it even when I shut my eyes." "So you would see death if you

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"Why have you both back?" she asked in a low strained voice.

Each looked at the other, but it was Rainer who replied.

"The crust of the crevasse has fallen in," he said, slowly.

For a moment she did not seem to comprehend the position.

"Fallen in!" she repeated, blankly. Then the truth broke in upon her like dammed-up water, and she burst into tears.

Rainer waited till the paroxysm of sobs had worn itself out.

"Miss Arbuthnot," he said, kindly, "you must not give way. We must hope that our friends will devise means of rescuing us, and meanwhile they will no doubt be able to keep us supplied with what we need."

"But how long will that be for?" she asked, hopelessly.

"I don't think," he replied, "that it will be for very long. Not more than a day or two at most. Our great danger is not from hunger and cold, but rather from falling masses of snow. other avalanche might come down upon us and put us out of pain, you know. Of course it is not

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very likely, but you see one never knows."

The hours passed slowly away. Of the three the girl was perhaps the most cheerful. Only the vague dangers of the position drew a cloud across her hopes. She knew nothing of the white death whose ghastly shadow lay heavy on the two men's souls. They knew that the lives of all hung by an invisible thread which might snap at any moment. They thrilled at every sound. Every time a foot scraped on the floor it started an avalanche and sent death tingling down the marrow of their backs.

But they would not tell the poor girl yet awhile. She was still

weak from the shock and want of food, and they would spare her if they could. There was yet hope for them, and they would not let it go. Life and death held them by the hands, standing at the parting of the ways.

Every half-hour or so Wainford went outside and gazed at the mass of snow above. It seemed to fascinate him, for he would stand and gaze for long at it, as if the contemplation afforded him a horrible satisfaction. He could not keep away. He must look whether he willed or not, and every time it seemed to him to be a little nearer. Sometimes he would fancy he saw it moving, and would shut his eyes for the coming crash. And still he watched, and still it did not fall.

"Look here, Rainer," he said, when they were outside soon afterwards, "I can't stand this much longer. I shall do something desperate before long."

"You wouldn't prove yourself a coward, surely," replied Rainer, sternly.

"You may call it what you like," he said, doggedly; "I don't call it cowardice to go to meet death.

I'm not afraid to die, but I can't stand this dying by inches."

"Are you less brave than that delicately brought-up girl in there?" Rainer asked, reproachfully.

"Ours are different kinds of courage, that is all."

they listened to it wailing and crying about them like a banshee crooning over their undug graves. Lying silent there, the two men thought of the great white death that hung above them, and they felt that ere long they might be

"No; yours is only cowardice glad that dread friend stood waitturned inside out."

"I don't care, I can't stand this. I feel death trickling across my soul all day long."

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"Our lives are not our own," said Rainer, sternly. "Would you take from God's hands the power of life and death?”

Wainford did not answer, but turned away, leaving the other standing looking doubtfully after him. For there was in his face the look of a desperate man.

About nine o'clock that morning a change came over the world's face. The bright sky turned slowly to a dull grey, and a heavy leaden horror crept over the scene. Then a fierce rustling wind rose like a ghostly thing out of the earth, and walked about like one distraught. The mountains hid themselves at its approach, and Nature seemed to shun its coming.

The two men looked at one another, and each read his Own thoughts in the other's face. They knew it only too well. It was the dreaded tourmente, the bitter, clammy, deadly wind before which no living thing can exist. Blowing usually for days, it sweeps the mountains, withering up life like the air from the wings of the Angel of Death. They knew that no aid could come to them while it lasted. Its life was their death. All through that day it blew, and in the darkness of the night they could hear it with stealthy footsteps wandering round the hut, now trying the rude door with its hand, and now calling to them through the crevices. All night

ing to open wide the gates of death to let them in.

In the morning they looked abroad with sinking hearts. The tourmente still swept across the mountains, and the world was blotted out. All day they remained indoors, not venturing to face the icy blast. face the icy blast. Slowly they watched Death creep closer to them. They felt that they were left to meet it as best they might. Even Miss Arbuthnot comprehended vaguely that it was drawing near. She read the truth in her companions' faces each saw his page in the Book of Life slowly folded down, and a hand writing across it, F-i-n-i- Thus far the letters went, and the missing one would soon be there.

They waited with what heart they could. Their fuel was exhausted. They had watched it disappear with hungry eyes; they knew it was their life that was burning slowly away. The last fragment of their food lay untasted beside them. The men would not touch it, but left it for the girl, and she, poor thing! could not eat. Earthly bread no longer seemed to tempt her.

They sat and thought strange sad thoughts, and at times they wrote on odd scraps of paper hungry words that brought tears to their eyes.

Late that afternoon Wainford, who had for some time sat deep in a morose reverie, rose and went out, closing the door behind him. He did not speak, but his looks were eloquent, and his face told strange things.

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Time passed, and he did not return. The man and the woman looked from time to time uneasily at one another, but they did not dare to translate their thoughts into speech.

Long they watched for him, but in vain. He came not back, and in time they grew accustomed to his absence, and only vaguely wondered at his fate. Where was he? Whither had he gone? They did not ask, but thought silently their Own thoughts. Their hearts told them only too truly. Somewhere out in that bitter mist-that was all they knew. Somewhere out on those icy hills, wrapped in Death's winding sheet, he lay. Gone heavenward. Waiting somewhere out in the blue void to welcome them again. Somewhere somewhere —that was all.

Towards evening a change came over the face of things. As if God's hand held it back, the fierce tourmente drooped, and faltered in the way.

The angel of destruction folded his wings, and passed on. Again the mountains stood forth, like witnesses of Time against the Earth's despair-calm, silent, a visible rebuke to those who doubted of the end.

Again Hope knocked faintly at their door, but they would not open now. They had made a tryst with Death and were waiting to hear his steps.

That night, when darkness had fallen, Rainer rose, and went out to be alone with the stars. He advanced to the edge of the snowy precipice and looked around. He knew it might be for the last time. Death was nearing them now, and his awful shadow was upon them. All about him stood the sentinel peaks, silent watchers, calmly tenacious of their awful secret, draped in the ghostly moonlight

VOL. CLX.-NO. DCCCCLXIX.

that lay upon them like a silver robe. Overhead the stars burned their blue lights like pilots of the awful void that crept closer to see them die. The gaunt vault stood like a dense wall of silence, hemming in the pinnacles of snow-a cold phalanx of air, like gathered into a little room. and clear the planets flamed like watchfires burning at heaven's gates. Below, the village lights twinkled ineffectually through the dimmer air. He felt like one who looks down through a chink in heaven to the far earth beneath.

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He peered over the precipice into the gulf below. How easy, he thought, would it be to leap suddenly down into that chasm, and, cheating Fate's slow doom, there grapple with the unknown. Death's mansion is a house whose doors stand always open. But it could not be. His life was never his own to cast away, and now his manhood belonged to another. He must bear her burden as well as his own. Death, he knew, was at hand. As he stood there his soul was listening for the sound that must soon come the sound of a voice calling in trumpet-tones from the heights to prepare for his coming.

He turned and went into the hut. Miss Arbuthnot was reclining with her eyes closed in an apathetic reverie. He laid his hand softly on her shoulder.

"Would you not like to see the face of the world again?" he said, quietly. "Come out and see how beautiful it can be. It will strengthen you to see the glory of the earthly hills."

He raised her and supported her into the open air. At the sight she uttered a cry.

But the grandeur of the scene stifled speech. She stood for a full minute drinking in the glory

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of the night. Then she turned painless and might come at any

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"Death may be better than life," he said, with grave kindliness.

Then he talked to her of lifeof its shortness and uncertainty, and of the suddenness with which its brightest day is overcast. He called it a lottery where one drew a prize and a thousand a blank; spoke of the mirage that waters its desert and builds green glories on its arid sands-delights that recede as we advance towards them. He spoke of old age with its waning fires; of its dulled perceptions and vain regrets; of its little nook by the fireside often grudgingly given; of its prison-chair soft to the body but hard to the mind.

Then he talked of death-spoke of it as universal, and therefore not an evil; painted it as the great reconciler and sweetener of life as a uniter rather than a divider.

moment?"

"Yes, I think I could feel almost happy if I could know that it would be so."

"Then be glad," he cried, and there was an exulting ring in his voice as he spoke. "Our death cannot be long delayed. We are standing very near to God. may come at any moment, and when it comes it will be sure and sudden."

"How?" she asked, faintly.

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"Part of the avalanche which broke down the crevasse is still hanging right above us. I have been watching it crawling slowly down towards us all yesterday and to-day. It will soon make its spring, and when it does it will be all over with us."

She drew in a long breath. "How long do you expect it will be till it falls?"

"It may fall at any moment." The suddenness of the call seemed to move her, and she paled a little. But she did not flinch.

"Thank God," she said, quietly. "At first I was rebellious, and my weak humanity reproached God, but now it comes as a deliverer."

"Yes, fate is often kinder to us than we are to ourselves. For me, I have always prayed that I might meet death with my man"Do you fear death very much?" hood about me, so that I might he asked, at the end.

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stand up to it like a man. It seems to me that to be overwhelmed by a mountain of snow is a not unenviable death. This day week many may pity us, but the wise will envy us. Surely it is a beautiful death to die among these glorious mountains. We shall become a part of them. Our names will be for ever associated with them. We shall be remembered longer than kings, and kings will not have so kingly a sepulchre. God has led us up on

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