There was reason in what he said. An Alpine guide under the circumstances is in much the same position as the captain of a ship. There are casualties which can be averted neither by the skill of the one nor the seamanship of the other, nor the courage of both. Yet when such occur public opinion is equally hard on both.
It was midnight before the sufferer was safely housed. The local practitioner looked grave, very grave, when he examined the injury. He peremptorily forbade the patient to set foot to the ground until he gave him leave, and that under pain of almost certainly losing his foot altogether.
“Great events from little causes spring.” The little cause in this instance was that little stone. There was a grim literalness in Peter Anderledy’s unconscious variation of a well-worn simile when he predicted that the stones were going to fall “like a devil”—for the falling of that little stone was destined to alter the course of Philip Orlebar’s whole life. Its effect might well have been the result of satanic intervention.
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Weapon to Hand.
“Hallo, Wentworth?”
“Hallo, Fordham!”