She peered into its sea-green depths awesomely. It resembled a toothless mouth gaping slowly open, ready enough to swallow her, but too inert to put forth the necessary effort. And the thought reminded her of something. She halted and turned to Bower. "Ought we not to be roped?" she asked. He laughed, with the quiet confidence of the expert mountaineer. "Why?" he cried. "The way is clear. One does not walk into a crevasse with one's eyes open." "But Stampa told me that I should refuse to advance a yard on ice or difficult rock without being roped." "Stampa, your cab driver?" There was no reason that she could fathom why her elderly friend's name should be repeated with such scornful emphasis. "Ah, yes. He is that because he is lame," she protested. "But he was one of the most famous guides in Zermatt years ago." She swung round and appealed to Barth, who was wondering why his employers were stopping before they had climbed twenty feet. "Are you from Zermatt?" she demanded. "No, _fraeulein_--from Pontresina. Zermatt is a long way from here." "But you know some of the Zermatt men, I suppose? Have you ever heard of Christian Stampa?" "Most certainly, _fraeulein_. My father helped him to build the first hut on the Hoernli Ridge." "Old Stampa!" chimed in Karl from beneath. "It will be long ere he is forgotten. I was one of four who carried him down from Corvatsch to Sils-Maria the day after he fell. He was making the descent by night,--a mad thing to do,--and there was murder in his heart, they said. But I never believed it. We shared a bottle of Monte Pulciano only yesterday, just for the sake of old times, and he was as merry as Hans von Rippach himself." Bower was stooping, so Helen could not see his face. He seemed to be fumbling with a boot lace. "You hear, Mr. Bower?" she cried. "I am quoting no mean authority." He did not answer. He had untied the lace and was readjusting it. The girl realized that to a man of his portly build his present attitude was not conducive to speech. It had an additional effect which did not suggest itself to her. The effort thus demanded from heart and lungs might bring back the blood to a face blanched by a deadly fear. Karl was stocked with reminiscences of Stampa. "I remember the time when people said Christian was the best man in the Bernina," he said. "He would never go back to the Valais after his daughter died. It was a strange thing that he should come to grief on a cowherd's track like that over Corvatsch. But Etta's affair----" "_Schweige!_" snarled Bower, straightening himself suddenly. His dark eyes shot such a gleam of lambent fury at the porter that the man's jaw fell. The words were frozen on his lips. He could not have been stricken dumb more effectually had he come face to face with one of the horrific sprites described in the folklore of the hills.