She looked up with surprise. My altered manner may well have amazed her. She did not know the reason of it. "You asked me kindly and--and pleasantly, and I would not. Now you ask me as if you threatened," she said. "Is it likely I should tell you now?" Well, I was angry with myself, and with her because she had made me angry with myself; and, the next minute, I became furiously angry with Denny, whom I found standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen, with a grin of intense amusement on his face. "What are you grinning at?" I demanded fiercely. "Oh, nothing," said Denny, and his face strove to assume a prudent gravity. "Bring a pickaxe," said I. Denny's face wandered toward Phroso. "Is she as annoying as that?" he seemed to ask. "A pickaxe?" he repeated in surprised tones. "Yes, two pickaxes! I'm going to have this floor up, and see if I can find out the great Stefanopoulos secret." I spoke with an accent of intense scorn. Again Phroso laughed; her hands beat very softly against one another. Heavens, what did she do that for when Denny was there, watching everything with those shrewd eyes of his? "The pickaxes!" I roared. Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed; I did not know what to do, how to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her. I took refuge in flight. I rushed into the kitchen on pretence of aiding or hastening Denny's search. I found him taking up an old pick that stood near the door leading to the compound. I seized it from his hand. "Confound you!" I cried, for Denny laughed openly at me; and I rushed back to the hall! But on the threshold I paused--and said what I will not write. For, though there came from somewhere just the last ripple of a mirthful laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! I flung the pickaxe down with a clatter on the boards, and exclaimed in my haste: "I wish to heaven I'd never bought the island!" But I did not mean that really. (_To be continued._) CLIMBING MONT BLANC IN A BLIZZARD. CAUGHT IN A BLINDING SNOW STORM ON A NARROW CLIFF, TWO AND A HALF MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL. BY GARRETT P. SERVISS, Author of "Astronomy with an Opera Glass," "Climbing the Matterhorn,"[15] etc. [Footnote 15: See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for September, 1895.] Standing on the spindling tower of the Matterhorn early one August morning in 1894 I saw, for the first time, the white crown of Europe, Mont Blanc, with its snows sparkling high above the roof of clouds that covered the dozing summer in the valleys of Piedmont. Just one year later I started from Chamonix to climb to that cool world in the blue.