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Davouassoux, more than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He said: "Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. This bit of skull, with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat.
Jerking the rope to attract Couttet's attention, I told him in a low voice to pass the others at the first opportunity. "We'll do it on the Grand Plateau," he whispered. Five minutes later, however, the advance party paused to take breath.
"But he did more than give advice," Chayne continued, "for as he went away to his home in the little village of Les Praz-Conduits, just across the fields, he passed Couttet's Hotel and saw you under the lamp talking to a guide he knew. You were making your arrangements to ascend the Charmoz. But he dissuaded you." "Yes."
Marie Couttet's experience, in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. Couttet identified other relics: "This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.
Marie Couttet's experience, in finding his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. Couttet identified other relics: "This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.
"We will stay at Couttet's and walk over to see him this evening," said Chayne, and after dinner they strolled across the little town. But at the Hôtel de l'Arve they found neither Garratt Skinner nor his friend, Walter Hine. "Only the day before yesterday," said the proprietor, "they started for the mountains. Always they make expeditions." Chayne drew no satisfaction from that statement.
And here was his guide grown old; and his friend, the comrade of so many climbs, so many bivouacs above the snow-line, had failed to keep his tryst. "Perhaps there will be a letter from him at Couttet's," said Chayne, and the two men walked through the streets to the hotel. There was no letter, but on the other hand there was a telegram. Chayne tore it open.
Davouassoux, more than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He said: "Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. This bit of skull, with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat.
"Is it wind or rain, do you think?" asked Lynde, looking at a wicked black cloud that with angrily curled white edges was lowering itself over the valley. "I think it is both, monsieur." "How soon?" "I cannot know. Within an hour, surely." "Perhaps we were wrong to attempt going down," said Lynde. "Monsieur might be kept at Couttet's one, two three days.
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